#508 Michael Christidis: The Energetic Entrepreneur Behind Australia’s Biggest Music Festivals

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mike Christidas, welcome to the mentor thank you having remark
from Melbourne?

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Yep, did you.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Bring the weather with it?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
What?

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Because buddy freeze up here today?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
No, yesterday, it was fantastic today today exactly that. Every
time I get up here, it seems it seems to
switch for yes.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
And Christies. It looks like a Greek name to me.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
I mean, by the way, you are from Melbourne, so
I guess that's a land Amazere.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
But is it a Greek name? Am I great Greek
background in my family?

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Your parents from Greece or what's the deal?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah? So both my parents from the same village of
Florida near Thessala. Nikki and Mum came over here. Mum
was born as five years old, she came over here.
Dad was born over here in Perth, Western Australia. My
family and farmers over there, and you know, migrated over
to the East Coast and you know, working in the
factories and stuff back in the seventies and eighties I
think it was. And yes, so first generation Greek family.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Hell, what is it with the Greeks? Do you reckon that?

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Because you know you're the co managing director of Untitled
group in Australia, which is a music festival business. Let's
call it that for the moment, for one of a
better terminology for someone like me, but clearly the entrepreneur.
You know, it takes a favorit of entrepreneurial entrepreneurialism to
run a business like this.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
You've got to have you've got to fibitt of guts.
You've got to be ballsy, you've got to be better
coppy it on the chin. You've got to date risks.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Sometimes you don't earn any money, sometimes you earn lots
of money. Gets sort of up and down like all
other joint but a lot of Greeks and a lot
of a lot of migrants.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Kids do this. Do you think that course was set
for you entrepreneurialism or yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Or not not just going into you know, festivals, but
just entrepreneurialism generally.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Is it a DNA thing? I mean, where do you
reckon that comes from?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah? I mean there probably is a level of resourcefulness.
You know, you hear those classic stories of we came
here with nothing and we had to kind of build
up that life. But I think there was very much
a traditional pathway that was always set out for you know,
you you get your money, you get a degree, you
get the job, you got to become a doctor or
a lawyer, you buy the house, you start the family.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
That was me, that's that was my parents.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah, yeah, and it was my parents too. I mean
my brother, my late brother, Daniel was an amazing doctor,
a surgeon, and my sister amazing she got an MBA. She's,
you know, working as a corporate comms specialist. And for me,
I studied biomedical science. I wanted to be a doctor,
follow in his footsteps because I was told that was
the only way.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
You're the youngest side, I'm the youngest yet.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, so I was told that's the only way. You know,
you've got to be a doctor. Actually, my grandmar my
few ways to go. Daniel, Daniel is proud he is
a doctor. And Michael, he does the disco. So I
did the disco for a living. But yeah, while studying
at UNI, I was doing biomedical science at Melbourne University,
and I was studying such kind of so much theory

(02:51):
and theory and theory. Well at the same time running
a nightclub where I was getting real world practiced that
I didn't know at the time was actually starting a
business and I became addicted to the real world practice
and week in week out making tweaks that I'd have
tangible changes versus sitting in a lecture theater. And I
think going back to.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
What were we doing it as like a side hustle
or just I.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Was doing well, We're doing the events as a side
hustle because we fell in love with electronic music. We
loved going out and seeing our favorite dj as and
artists play, but we didn't find that there was a
nightclub that really kind of encaptuated that sense of community
and exactly what we wanted tonight. So it was at
that time I was eighteen at Melbourne University that I
found met my now three business partners and untitled Christian

(03:30):
Nick and Film and we came up with these all
these ideas to create this brand new revolutionar crubl and
it was actually at this famous venue called Inflation in Melbourne,
and we started a night called Treehouse. It was a
night where we played the music we wanted to hear,
we decorated it the way we wanted to do, we
did the drinks how we wanted everything, and it was
a night for us and our friends, and it very
quickly blew out beyond that. We were doing about two

(03:51):
thousand people a week and it was like the hottest
nightclub in Melbourne. And I just remember rocking up to
Union because you know, shout out to anybody doing law
or science and doing five days a week of troots
practice that. And I'd be so hung over rocking up
to these lectures and stuff, and I just kept thinking,
under my mind was on my business. It wasn't in
the lecture. Theater was in the business. So I became

(04:13):
very quickly addicted to wanting to just kind of keep
sharpening up that side of things.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
When you're a young man, your brother and sister and
I'm sorry to hear your brother's past, but your brother
and sister gone through university, got their degrees.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
He's got the.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Steady job helping you feel good and everybody's happy. And
then you're doing a biomedical degree. So you know, you're
sort of pathwaying yourself into something to do something similar
to your brother, if you so chose, how did you?
But at the same time, you had this bit of
an urge to do something that you liked, run your

(04:48):
own venue, so to speak, and have your own music
and have your own style.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
How do you deal with the guilt?

Speaker 3 (04:56):
Did you have to deal with the guild of doing
what everyone my family's done?

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Am I going to be a failure? Am I going
to let my mom and dad down?

Speaker 3 (05:05):
Am I not going to just but not follow him
the footsteps of my brother's Just do I love dearly?

Speaker 1 (05:09):
And who I probably idolize? Yeah, thats funny.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
You asked the question before about what is it about
these these This seems to be a great spark of
entrepreneurs that come from these European countries that might be
first second generation over here, and there is that sense
of maybe rebellion of everyone being told that's why you've
got to do it. And my parents only found out
that I deferred from UNI because being a good Greek boy,
you know, I didn't tell him that I deferred. My

(05:34):
brother was the one he could see that my heart
wasn't becoming a doctor. He would be at all my
events all the time with the unofficial doctor at our
fistal doctor Dan, everyone calls him. We've now got a
stage dedicated to him, which is one of the biggest
stages that be in the valley, which is hilarious. It's
a great, great stage. He'd be very proud, But it
was him that was always going, Mike, your heart's not
in this. Your your own music just pursued and I said,

(05:55):
I can't tell mom and dad that I'm going to
drop O. Don't to him, just do it. So as
I did, I dropped out of Union. Didn't tell my parents.
How did they find out? When I got a fine
for not having a concession card on the tram And
as being good Greek parents, they'd opened the mail and
they said, there's a concession card, but you know you
have a consess you at UNI still, And then that's
how they found out I dropped out of UNI by
getting a fine for not having a concession card on

(06:16):
the tram. They opened up my mail essentially just.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
On that, Mike, that's interesting. You just said did you
drop out or did you defer? Did you just keep
an option?

Speaker 2 (06:26):
You know what it's it's and that's that's probably like
one of those kind of pivotal moments, is like I deferred.
I deferred, And because we were always running nightclubs, we
was just a bunch of friends that were bringing this
events in together, and you know, we went from Treehouse
to Anyway, which was at the Metro Theater. Then we're
doing three thousand people a week and we were now
connecting with great Australian artists that were up on the rise.

(06:48):
And it wasn't until we saw a bigger gap in
the market, which was when we launched Beyond the Valley
for a multi day music camping festival that was focused
around dance music. So that commune club that we were
kind of building out and taking that big step from
nightclubs to festivals that requires you to be all in.
And there was a point where deferring turned into no,

(07:11):
I'm giving this my all. I'd rather sink or swim.
And I think when we take that, took that big
leap of faith, and you know, there was only two
years later. We're in our early twenties. I was twenty
years old, but going all in on it, it was
really kind of a big, big shift. And yeah, once
once we launched that festival of in Years Eve, we
knew we'd created something special. You know, we did lose

(07:33):
a million dollars in our first event at the Ripe
Old Age of twenty.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
You made a million dollars or you lost it.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
We lost a million dollars.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
You lost a million dollars? Yeah, yeah, how would you
get a million bucks to lose?

Speaker 2 (07:43):
It's funny running the nightclub successfully for all those years,
but not to mention we've been bootstraps since day one.
We went to our families and everyone to kind of
chip in and help. And yeah, it seems very simple
from going to a nightclub to a big eight thousand
person camping event. You book, the talent, market the show,
but there's so many other elements in running an event

(08:03):
like this, all these people under your duty of care,
the safety of the traffic, management, the security of the policing,
first aid. We sold the tickets, we didn't budget for
all these other things, and yeah, we lost. We came
up a million dollars short on our first event. As
a promoter, when you have an event that is really
good and do you feel that that special, that energy there,
the only thing that you can do is to go

(08:24):
again and hope that you get that buying from that community.
And we did. We went on, say when our second
year Beyond the Valley, and everyone had heard about this
amazing new event, and we sold eighteen thousand tickets in
our second.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
Year how did you sell in the first year?

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Just five thousands And it was funny that it was
we would run it on Philip Island in our first
year Pyramid Rock fessel that used to exist. There was
a whole sleuth festivals that were around at that time.
There was like Falls Vessel, Pyramid Rock. You remember, we
came out a big day out, sound Way, Future Music, Stereosonic.
They were all these vessels that we grew up attending

(08:55):
and loved, but they kind of failed to adapt as
the culture shifted and the time shifted, and we saw
that real opportunity to create a more boutique, bespoke event
tailored to the experience. We were the first and tried
to introduce glamping so people could have their luxurious tents
and everything all set up to them and a lot
of hot new acts in that first year Rufus de

(09:15):
sol K Trinada, Don Dolla, all center around electronic music.
That yeah, in our second year just really took off
and we sold eighteen thousand tickets.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
But does that mean your expense is doubled? Well, because
you got to I guess you got early thousand guests
that you gotta look at after which means you've got
to put on extra security all those things you mentioned before.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
Was a man for man like is a dollar for dollar?

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, it is, And to be honest, every year is
a different learning experience. That year selling eighteen thousand tickets,
we were probably still chasing the recovery of what we
lost in the first year, and we probably weren't ready
to run an event of that color. But we were
running enough camping space, camping people in the hills. We
didn't have enough resources for the other things, because well
it is dollar dollar. The availability over years is very hard,

(10:02):
and particularly that year was four to forty degree days
in a row. People don't realize we're diverting ice shipments
to help the CFA cool their fire trucks down and
have to make these really hard decisions. And the experience
wasn't great in our second year, so we went from
eight to eighteen thousand tickets. The next year we only
sold twelve and a half thousand tickets because the experience
the year before was not.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Great and the experience for the guests or the.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Experience for the guests.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Yeah, yeah, we purposely sold less tickets. No, No, they
just saw were not gone back.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
They just said, oh that event, we heard so much
about it, it wasn't too great and we had to
then again copper loss in the third year, going okay,
So what we learned a lot about was reinvesting into
the Punter experience, reinvesting into the shortcomings that happened, and
having to take a hit again to kind of sustainably
build an event. And so when you'll get the trajectory
now beyond the Valley is you know, we're celebrating our

(10:54):
tenth the anniversary this year. We sold out forty thousand
tickets instantly when we went to sale, and you know these, Yeah,
it's really great to see that. You know, the trajectory
has gone from eighty to eighteen thousand, it dropped down
twelve and then we went fifteen, eighteen, twenty five and
a half, thirty thirty five, forty in it. It's been
that constant build of how can we continue to refine

(11:16):
and get things better for our audience, for our artists
and for us, Like we're still learning. You know, I'm
very very excited for what we're going to deliver this year,
but we're constantly learning and refining and I think that's
having your finger on the pulse and constantly being dynamic
is what's going to stand the test of time for
a good vessel event.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
So lots of people who are in my audience, you
know that they have ideas about that a job in
your case of unit, they might be at union, it
might be learning doing something in a formal sense. Jobs
formal way of learning on the job. University is the
form way of learning. And then they have the side ustle,
you know, the thing they I'm not sure about they
really love. And then your case was music and or

(11:57):
events at music at places, not the festivals, but you
know like a you know, music events in Melbourne and
Melbourne's I think Melbourne might be a little bit different
to Sitting in that regard.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
But I'll come back to that.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, we'll come back to it because the whole of
Australia is different.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
I will come back to it because I'd love to
know which how you see that sort of stuff.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
But you have to work out at some stages a
tipping point.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
There's a point at which I'm all in, you know,
like and who do you discuss that with when you're
a kid at the time of like twenty so, who
did you discuss with Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
You know what's funny is yeah, well, my brother was
always a great inspiration for me and mental I think
mentorship is very important, and it's really funny that I've
had various mentors over my life.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
You know, we're only young, you know, thirty something, thirty two,
So over the last say, twelve forteen years, you had
various mentors.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Various mentors. Yeah, yeah, and like I'll never forget. So
one of my first mentors, Mike Bird, was on a
on a walk with me during COVID.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
You get him as a mentor, Yeah, you know why him.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Because because he saw something in me to encourage me
to think bigger. He was just a friend of a
friend that I was Oh. Actually, so my partner at
the time worked for his company, and I invited him
one to one of my events, took him down to
grapevine gathering in the Yarra Valley and he just was
amazed by the community and what he goes, this is amazing,
Like it's amazing, but you're not. He said, You're not

(13:26):
in the festival game. You're in the audience game. And
I kind of didn't understand it at the time. And
what he was encouraged me to say, he goes, look
at all these people that are coming to your events,
and think about all the other great things that you
could You should be selling your own wines and your
this and doing that, and.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
Just as opposed to just having an artist sub there
sing each of them.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Yeah, yeah, just I think at the time we were
just we were just running a series of At that stage,
we'd had we had a successful club night, we had
a few different vestvals, but there was no real all
encompassing kind of brand of.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
That was nothing for people belonged to Yeah, yeah, no.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Belonging to credit the community. And that's why you know,
I think about you know this and this was still
like a decade ago, was when we really kind of
growing us to create Untitled Group, which was encompassed everything
that we do as a company, and we really do
think kind of limitless in what we're able to do
with the future, and we want to always service audience

(14:24):
with better products and services. And you know, I think
during COVID going back to that that for the first
thing that that mental set was just about diversification, and
it was a survey that came out that was asking
the consumption habits of young people and we saw on
there it was where do young people get their news?
And it was you know, social media TV and seventy

(14:45):
percent of respondents wrote the Daily OS, which within now
what is great? And you've had Zara on this program
and we were and that was a non predict option
that people had to fill out. When we found out
seven percent of our audience was going to that as
their primary news source, we reached out to the Daily
Was we said, how can we support haw caen back
and we made a strategic investment and partnership in that company.

(15:06):
It's been one of our kind of best partnership companies
that we've gone on to work with and.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
As an investor or, yeah, well yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
I mean, I mean we're a kind of major shareholder
with them. It was a quite quite significant investment and
looking at ways that we can kind of collaborate between
the two companies, which has been really successful over the
past couple of years in terms of helping to cross
pollin eate and align each other to the database and audience,
which has been really really successful.

Speaker 3 (15:32):
You mentioned your mental guy dude and a friend of
a friend, et cetera, and he said to you, you're
not really running festivals, you're delivering something to an audience.
Was that off the back of a question you asked
him or did you just volunteer that to you?

Speaker 2 (15:49):
I think that's the great things about Yeah again going
to mentorship, and I keep saying mentors, Mike Byrd, Rob Philpott,
all these people that have been great mental they're still
they're my best friends, and they're still my best friends.
But it's interweaving that kind of business knowledge in a
way that's kind of not telling me what to do,
but planting the seed that allows me to kind of

(16:09):
come onto the next thing. It's Yeah, it's a really
funny thing because Mike actually he encouraged me to buy
a Beat magazine at the time. He's like, you guys
should buy a Beat and do this and that, And
then three years later we end up investing in the
Daily was and kind of the right things kind of
came about in the right way. And I just think
it's it's having those conversations that enable you to think bigger,
even if it's not at the time just come about

(16:30):
full circle. They plant the seed, the seed, but you
have to be open to that though. I think I
think the biggest thing is putting yourself out there and
showing up. You know. I've even mentored a lot of
young people that want to get into the music industry
because they take a leap of faith. They messaged me
on into it. They'll grab me at an event and say, hey,
can we have a coffee? And I think you're going
to find the right people that are that are there
for you. And some people might be a bit more

(16:52):
protective of their time aroun jury then, but like you know,
putting you don't know if unless you put yourself out there.
I was very lucky enough to have Mike as a
friend and then he introduced me to these different circles
and people that I'd constantly take inspiration from. In fact,
probably one of the biggest so one of the biggest
things that I probably learned was in March or twenty twenty,

(17:13):
that moment where I told my parents dropping out of
UNI going to going all in on music. They said,
music's nothing but sex, drugs and rock and roll, and
it's not a business. And I was reading Richard Branson's
Losing My Virginity, which was such an inspiring book for me.
From going from a record label to space travel and
everything that Virgin did. It was so inspiring and I
just felt the energy and I threw the book down

(17:35):
and said, well, Richard Brandson can do it. And my
parents said, oh, Richard brands knew about Richard Branson. In
March of twenty twenty, I was lucky enough to get
invited to Necker Island for an entrepreneur summit to spend
some time with Richard.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
And that's his island.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah, yeah, so his great team of entrepreneurs. And I
had a bit of imposter syndrome when I was there,
but there was a lot of focus for me. I
was thinking about Richard and Richard about how much I
idolized him, all the people I met that trip, with
the people that I now still have great friendships and
become mentors to me, and they were That was the
most impactful thing. It wasn't It wasn't necessarily a meeting Richard,

(18:09):
that connection himself. It was all the other great friendships.
You know, one of my great mentors now, Rob Philpott,
is somebody that I met on that island. And again
this thing was getting hammered to me about diversifying and diversifying.
And in March of twenty twenty, when we were there,
the global pandemic hit and so before you know it,
we're in lax seventy two hour wait. I get flown
into a ten day quarantine in Melbourne. So I had

(18:30):
a lot of time to kind of think about what
are these other things that we want to.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
Do with the indiversification as of the.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Product, so diversication as a business, because you know, everyone
kept saying what happens if you can't run your festival,
what happens if one festival it gets wiped out by
the weather? You know what you house your business? And
I think having that period for COVID was actually, even
though I decimated our industry and it was really really
a tough time as it was for everyone, it gave

(18:57):
us time to really recalibrate and go, what does the
you look like for us as a company when we
come out of this pandemic and we're our areas of
focus and how can we ensure that we're diversified enough
that not one thing will rock us, not one thing
can really shake us. And you know, coming out of COVID,
you know we had seven staff. You know that we
kept all of our staff, our small team was seven

(19:17):
during COVID, and we were trying to be dynamic and
agile on all these things that we were trying to
do during COVID. When we came out of when we
hit the vaccination targets and mass gatherings were all out again,
we were ready, already with a ready made lineup and
readything out. We were on nine News that night saying
stay tuned, Beyond the Valley's got a special announcement tomorrow,

(19:37):
and we announced Beyond the City, which was a version
of our fessel at Sydney My Music Bowl, which sold
sixty thousand tickets across two days. So a lot of
our competitors that maybe let go of staff or a
bit kind of not quick to return to market. We
were rolling out event after event after event, and you know,
we went from six to well now sixty staff in

(19:58):
the space of you know, three years. But I remember
that first twelve month period we went from six to
thirty six staff, So.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
Thirty staff first almost after COVID. After COVID, yeah six
through how many thirty six? Yeah wow.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
So we were we were throwing people at problems while
we were in a hyper growth phase, throwing people at problems,
just growing, growing, growing, growing, And while that was really fantastic,
again it was all in line with the plan that
we had coming building COVID, that diversified business model of
different styles of events that tapped to different genres and
different things in the business portfolio like the Daliels which

(20:31):
is a media company, strategic investment into Mister Young which
is now me and you you know, all these kind
of different things that we would embed and integrate in
our events, Ugly Vodka which is our sustainable vodka brand
made from ugly apples. All these kind of different businesses
all working in unison. But then again we as we
were in hypergrowth, you know, another thing rocked us and

(20:51):
I think a real testament to this whole kind of diversification.
One of the ticketing partners that we were using Fest ticket,
Sudden Gets, announced that they're going to administrate global administration,
and we're quickly checking out how much of their fund
of our funds they're still holding. And I'll never forget
that moment when we found out that none of the

(21:12):
debtors were getting any money back and they had three
and a half million.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Dollars you being in debtor, yep, they had three and
a half.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Million dollars of our ticketing funds.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
So your your audience or your your community bought tickets
from this mob.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Bought tickets to this mob, and they I think it
was Grapevine twenty twenty two. Yeah, and they're going to
add min Yeah, so they buy the tickets from the
or Great Mine twenty twenty three. Actually they go into administration.
People have bought the tickets. They're holding a set amount
of funds. I've given us some, and we now are
three and a half million dollars down from the ticketing

(21:48):
funds that we're meant to get from our audience, and
we're expected to still deliver this event.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
And you've got to pay the artists everything either, we've
got to pay everything.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
Still to full. There was that real kind of again
a line in the same moment about do we do
we be upfront with everyone? Do we cancel the event
and say we don't know, you know, we kind of
the fund he's a partial refund. Here's what happened, And
that would have been I feel like if we made that,
which would have been obviously the easy move to do,
that would have impacted our reputation so much that it

(22:17):
would have probably been the end of Untitled Group, we
made a conscio decision We're going full steam ahead. We'll
switch ticketing providers to another provider, continue to sell tickets
and we'll honor every ticket and just take take the loss.
But we ran a great event still and everybody was
still so appreciative and those that particularly new and could
see the new the global news that for us to

(22:38):
go ahead and pull through it really took a lot,
a lot of resource and pulling and you know how
we were able to to kind of get through with that.
But the VIA brand good for the brand, But I
also think there's an element to it that's good for
you know, your your creativity and and your drive never

(22:59):
comes from an area of curity and abundance, you know.
It was really that scarcity and that that fire underneath us,
that holy shit, we need to do something to fix
this three and a half million or avoid and how
can we drive other areas of the business. And we
are always constantly and that goes back to this whole diversification.
One vessel that was great fun gathering, you know, copped

(23:19):
a huge loss. We had to find other areas to
get revenue, ideas or business in other areas and we
were able to do that to kind of continue this again.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
Feel that gap, to fill the gap and also not
to disappoint your customers and also to keep your brand
alive or your brand would be reliable.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
At a minimum.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
Could I just go back to you can feel my diversification,
but I think we need to sort of expand on
that a little bit and I'd love to know how
you did it. So let's go back to that period
during COVID, when you know, particularly Victoria, everything is pretty
much closed down. You're not going to have gathering to
beople to get together.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Well, we were try at dinner when again I mentioned
I had seven staff during COVID that we're just staying active.
We announced this thing called at the drive in. We
were doing drive in concerts, so while everyone else was completely.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
Silent, you drive you car in driving like the old movies, but.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
A band's playing. So imagine if that book your cars
three people per car, social distance and get your drinks
to live to your car. The amount of work that
went into that concert series that we were you know,
had a and great to give Australian artists a platform
to perform again and it was received really well, everyone's
going to be great on title group. This is amazing.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
The artists have to stand two meters apart or something well.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Being in victoria. Of course, while we're mid build, another
lockdown happens. So there goes us trying to do something
good for everyone and putting more hardship on again something
that gets canceled halfway through. So we never got to
go ahead with it. The drive in theater one, to
be honest, thank god, because that would have just been
too dystopian for me, like some weird imagine, like you know,

(24:52):
watching watching bands in your car just just just really wouldn't.
It just doesn't sit right for me with live music,
tuning into the radio to hear a band that's playing
in front.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
Are you now, Like I remember those driving theaters. We
these actually have a speaker thing. You just take off
a steel post and speak thing. It was like a
big boxing like that. You used to hang it off
your window and wind your window up and hang it
on the window and used to give us a little
volume thing and they used to dial it up or
dollar down.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
As a kid, I remember going to the movies.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
When you said that, I thought to myself, you'd all
be watching the movie the band through your front window,
have the windows all wound up and getting the music
subgrade in terms of quality.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
Listen to the band that would the would do mad Like.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
I love the idea of that, so go we can
bring it back one day if I love it. Well,
we have we still got to drive in theater and sit.
It's out about kill if I can just go a
bit to divestication. So you're talking about how do we
bulletproof ourselves for the future. Given we already know that
we're currently can't can't have groups together because of the
COVID et cetera. You're thinking yourself, well, what can I

(25:54):
do to bulletproof? What can we do to bulletprove ourselves
for the future against any outcome, anything that gets in
our way. So diversification means how do I get ready
for when this all gets lifted?

Speaker 1 (26:08):
So what how do we how do we come out
of this strong? How do we and first to start, how.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Do we first market too? We knew that people were
itching for events to everyone just want to particularly in
Melbourne like it was you know obviously like most lockdown
city in the world. Everybody's itching again. So one how
can we be first to market with our core products
being beyond the valley, you know, grapevine.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
I just stop there. So, okay, I understand the question.
Let's talk about execution.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
So what did you do?

Speaker 1 (26:38):
You did you say? Okay? And how did you conduct
these groups? Like you got your six or seven key staff, like,
how does it work?

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Well? I think at that time we were saying we
were constantly booking lineups for dates where we expected this
pandemic to end, for the future, for the future. The
problem was was that was since the start of the pandemic.
So I think we booked five or six different lineups
over the course and guys, come on, let's pull the
trigger on this one. This one's done, you know, having
arguments of a fees and billing and a product where

(27:08):
you knew it wasn't going to go ahead, but there's
that slight window a chance. And ultimately it took about
five or six iterations when we got down the line
and we were preparing for that new years to come
and we were like, I think we might be right,
we think we might actually come out of this pandemic then,
and we had the products ready, we got the artwork, everything,
and it just so happened. I think it was right

(27:28):
in October when we hit the vaccination targets and mass
gatherings were allowed again. So again one of my business partners,
Christian was on nine News that evening saying, stay tuned
Beyond the Valley's got special announce at twelve pm tomorrow
and Melbourne is everyone's just ready to go. And twelve
pm we announced a fully fledged lineup for a fessel
you can buy tickets for that's in five or six weeks.

(27:49):
So actually, yeah, actually was that it would have been
in November. It was like five or six weeks away,
and that went really well. Then we rolled into our
Grapevine gathering, which we already had a lineup and everything
booked for for the love of our vessel. So we
had all these brands that were ready to go. And
in terms of that diversification every one of these brands service,
i'd feel was what is a different audience? So some

(28:11):
might be targeted a younger, more electronic audience, some might
be targeted at an older, more band like audience. And
so within the live music space, we had events that
appealed to different niches. And then I say, looking outside
of events for the first time was when we looked
at things like the daily Os, mister You. You know
our vodka brand, so.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
You you looked at other things that could sustain you
irrespective of whether or not you're gonna have a festival, correct,
because the Daily as people subscribe to it, that's a
subscription business.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
It's got it.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
I think it's advertising business. They make the money. That's
I think that's their model. Yeah, yeah, so and and
then the vodkas obviously slam Booze and mister You.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
But the QR code ordering technology, right, that's yeah. But
again I think I'm had him on the show. She Yeah,
Hadrid and Kim great absolutely great founders. And again going
back to it has does it? The number one thing
is that it does it align with our audience.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
And when we first invested in mister Y, I remember
because there was very novel back then, and the problem
that they were solving was people were ordering predominantly from
social media. They were going on Instagram and going, oh
what is this one? But no one had picture menus.
So they were solving this great problem where this is
predominantly young female audiences were going to cafes and ordering

(29:24):
on Instagram they'd create a QR code menu and they
were able to order off the picture menu. In the restaurant,
they'll find the average order was going up by twenty
thirty percent, the labor costs are going down, and we
just thought, this is genius. How can we back this,
integrate it into all of our events, so that beyond
the city event that I mentioned at Cinnema Music Bowl,
there was a mister yarm area with the QR code

(29:44):
law and technology. People could order drinks to their special
VIP area, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
So you've invested vertically basically, so you end up. But
where did those ideas come from? Like was it you
make my bed or someone my bird I should say,
as a city there giving those ideas, because like these
are pretty mature ideas, and vertical investing is not normal
and not you know, in your game and for your

(30:09):
age group with a grocery respect, But you're doing it.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
So I think that when I joke about that friendship
and mental thing, I love this because he's going to
listen to this. But Mike Bird well I told him
about it, have come across this great app this great thing,
mister you, et cetera. And he said ditch it, overvalued,
ditch it. You guys don't and me and my business
partners don't do anything by half measures. So we took
a pretty strong position well in that company at a

(30:34):
very early time. And he's gone on now to say
I'm really glad you didn't listen to me at that point.
And and that was when he said, I think you're
ready to you know, you know, the apprentice has become
the master and passed me on. So we joke around.
He's one of my best friends.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
And the vodka business, so you have a what they
call him a but license to sell out the venues. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah, I think that the Vodica business is really interesting
because at its core, I mean the taglines party with
purpose for the vodka brand, it's Australis it's first sustainable
vodka made from ugly apples. So apples at farmers will
go to sell to coals, the Wollyes or super.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Much for real.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Yeah, So basically these apples get thrown away and thrown
into landfill right, terrible for the environment. Farmers get nothing
for it. So ugly help support ouzsie farmers and reduce emissions.
One you know, with every bottle that we do, and
I think we could have invested in any alcohol brand
just put cheap white label anything and put it at
our vessels and events. But what's the purpose behind it,

(31:31):
what's the drive and how a we're giving a better
product to our audience. So just from a simple switch
out of all the vodka, because vodka red Bulls still
the most popular drink at our events. From a simple
switch out to make ugly vodka the vodka at Beyond
the Valley which they go through aut of vodka, you know,
we save twenty tons of food waste.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Maybe you could just quickly tell our audience how you
knew that about your audience, so they just get a
bit of an info on your demo. What's the story
about your audience? So we're talking about male female age group.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Okay, So on title Group's got probably one of the
largest use databases nationally. So we've probably about over one
point five million on our database. Because you remember, you know,
over the last decade, our audience has gone from eighteen
to twenty one, twenty five year old demographic. Now we
do events, you know we're upcoming, we're promoting Wu Tang Clan,
Good Charlotte, all these nostalgic, iconic blands. Yeah, we've done

(32:21):
with Christina Aguilera and Nali Fatada. So our database is
quite broad from eighteen to fifty.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
So you keep them, Yeah, we.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
Keep them, keep them on them. But I think what's
really interesting is that And yeah, and we get a
lot of insights into this audience just through particularly a
lot of testing and surveying incentivized by you know, winning
tickets to events or whatnot. And it's really funny that
this gives us really rich first party data to understand
and know them. And I think that is really good

(32:49):
to be data led. But that probably comes back to
those core principles of when we started the club night.
We'd be in the club, you know, at the bar
on the dance floor asking people, hey, so what do
you think of the music here? Out of this, oh
you could change one thing like this artist, and we
get that really good feel for our audience. Nowadays, it's
a it's a bit of a dual concept where you've
got to be data led, but you also kind of

(33:10):
have that either firsthand. Sometimes it's a conversation going to
be on the street.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
Yeah, yeah, because that when it comes to vodka, because
I'm always intrigued by things like this. So you didn't
choose beer, he didn't choose craft beer, didn't choose you know,
wine or whiskey or whatever. You choose vodka. And I
think you mentioned before because you know, the most popular
drink is red Bull and vodka or whatever that's called.
Whatever the drinks probably got some special name for it.

(33:36):
It's pretty crazy drink ugly vodka, red Bull and then
the new then you decide. But the vodka I'm going
to put in there is a vodka that it comes
from ugly apples or rejected apples. Because you knew your
audience would vibe that, they'd like that, they like the
idea of that.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yeah, And when you look at the is it environmental
that yeah, Sustainability isability is you know about your audience.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
How did you know your audience?

Speaker 3 (33:58):
The demograph is your audience would really react to something
that's sustainable.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
When we do post survey data, particularly from beyond the Valley,
and I mean vessels particularly have a large impact on
the environment. We try and do as much as we
can to mitigate that, but a lot of it does
come down to consumer behavior we encourage, which we really
do try and encourage people to kind of leave no
trace and respect the land they come in and do.
But a lot of you know, people that go to

(34:25):
camping vessels because it's build up to New Year's and
it's the whole thing they prepare for. I'll leave the tent,
I'll leave the broad mattress, I leave that and what
does they don't take it home? No, no, no, no,
A lot a lot. Like we encourage a lot of
people and to be honest and to be fair. While
there is a lot of waste that's left over, none
of that does actually go to waste. We do repurpose,
donate through everything that we can with everything to avoid

(34:45):
it going to waste. But what we did learn from
the post event surveys of how wasteful people could be
or left was that our audience really does care about sustainability.
So how can we you know, ugly, because one of
many initiatives that we do in terms of besting back
into sustainability and partner with organization organizations like tree Creds
and and just ways that we can be better on

(35:08):
that front because we know our audience cares about it.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
So, yeah, but your audience when you started at twenty
or now in your thirties. A lot of your audience
would bils have been the thirties to be older, way
beyonder correct, So you know you know a lot about them.
How do you find out this stuff about Well, you
talk about d post festival, do you do?

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Send it an emails?

Speaker 2 (35:27):
We're constantly serving out, always communicating, always communicating, always on.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
And how do you collect that data? So when they're
buying the tickets that you get the data from the
ticket Yeah, I mean, I.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
Mean the ticketing agencies usually just have a lot of
just because a lot of times they don't want to
share it.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
I think it's like there's infographics and there's kind of
psychographic data or whatever, so that all of the ticketing
partners they'll just have name, age, yeah, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
You know, no email address for example. They don't they
don't supply that sort of stuff. Yeah, well, well what
they do, but people have to opt in et cetera.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
There's a friction there, there's a friction point, and so
what we've been able to do is communicate with them
and say, participate with this thing to help us make
this vessel better or learn this insight in fact, we're
actually been so good at kind of collecting data and
understanding how our audience works. We recently partnered with Creative
Australia to do a music insight survey of how young
people are consuming live music in the country and what's

(36:17):
their decision because you would have heard a lot about
you know, live events kind of decline, people drinking less,
et cetera. And some of the insights that we were
finding of that survey were fantastic. Young people are drinking less,
but they're drinking less at venues and events where beers
cost twelve dollars, beers cost fourteen dollars. If anything, they're

(36:39):
drinking at home, they're prero drinking more.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
They drink, drink before they get there.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah, everyone likes to call it a sober generation, and look,
I do think it's a lot more health conscious this generation,
but the reality is they're a lot more cost sensitive
because of the cost of living and everything that's gone
up so much. So it's people are a lot more
discerning as to where their dollar goes, and that goes
for everything from how many drinks they're buying at the event.
Bar sales have completely declined over the past you know,

(37:04):
five years particularly, but also bring their own gold depending
what type of event you go to. Yeah, you know,
so one of our vessels and one of probably one
of our favorite events as well was Pitch Vessel out
at the Grampians, three day camping vessel where people can bway,
you know, come and really have that kind of camping
out in nature experience and you know, people come down

(37:24):
to the dance falls with their drinks and their friends
and it's a really really special type of vibe that
we've created there at Pitch and again something totally different
that you'd get to beyond the valley. So going to
different audiences and tapping into different markets to diversify their business.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
Why do you think your vessels are working when you
go to I'm a resident Barron Bay and you go
to Byron and you know, the two b vessels up
there have sort of pretty much died off think in
fact last year.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
This year, as far as I understand.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
They're going to cancel the Roots and Blues festival because insurance.
They couldn't afford insurance because it rains up there. Like
I don't know what, I don't know what to deal
with insurance. Maybe it's flood or so I don't know
what insurance is full, but they had to cancel it.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
What do you think it is? Well, okay, well there's
a whole bunch of things because of weather. Yeah, I mean,
firstly running running. You'd have to be pretty much mad
to enter the festival market at a large scale right now.
The business model is not fantastic. You know, you look
at a fessel like beyond the Valley where you are
catering for forty thousand. We've got expenditure in the tens

(38:31):
of millions of dollars to make a very very tiny
margin for what you'd expect for.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
That, which is why you need forty thousand. So that's
why you need forty thousand exactly.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
And your break evens are literally sitting at your thirty
nine and you're very much up there. Combined that with
the variables of weather and one year it might be
a heat wave, the next year we're getting flooded out.
Combined that with variables of artists, cancelation of things, and
Australia has been hit really hard with all these different
things over the past couple of years that there's an
element of even audience distrust that they can kind of

(39:01):
you know, I'm not going went last year. It was
all hard and so all it takes is one bad year,
you know, And you look at the case of like
Splendor in the Grass. Spender was the biggest vessel in
the country. They had a really unfortunate year with those
four days of rain in a row, which is a
really poor experience, and in my opinion, they struggled to
kind of bounce back from the Remember the consumer trust.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
I remember that the period because Red Bull was a
big sponsor up there. Yeah, and they pulled because of
the Muden.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
It was just it was just yeah, and you'll get
those variables, and then on top of that, so you've
got those variables and then on top of that. I
always assimilated when people go the people complain a lot
about ticket prices. Nowadays, I really assimilated to a kind
of when we look at construction or building a house,
people aren't doing a lot of big new construction at
the moments they go. The cost of building everything's terrible

(39:52):
right now. Cost have gone up thirty to forty percent.
Cost has gone up thirty forty percent for us as
well in the last five years. But we can't just
pass that thirty forty percent onto the ticket price because
there's a limit of what our consumer can handle. So
we're trying to manage increased cost things, increase risk, increase
insurance shrinking margin, wat insurance shrinking margin. Well, our consumers

(40:13):
also have less disposable income, less money to spend, so
you really have to balance this fine point of going, Okay,
what product can we create to make the best product
with puzzles so everyone wants to come, and then what
is the ceiling of what the market can really spend
on that? Because you could create the best product on
the planet. But if it's a thousand bucks per ticket,
people go, oh, I need that for my europe money.

(40:33):
I need that for you know, because it got so
many other choices choices. Yeah, and it used to be
you know, talk about like Apple's fabuls. You used to
be able to that festl I mentioned before Grapevine Gathering.
It used to be a seventy to ninety dollars ticket
to see a day out of the wineries with some bands.
Fast forward to and that was back in twenty nineteen.

(40:54):
Fast forward out of COVID. We're talking less than fourty
five years later. The tickets for that would now had
to be at one hundred and fifty hundred and sixty
for the same experience, so almost doubled just to make
it viable for this single stage event. And we actually,
you know, we we put a pause on that brand.
We've taken a year off last year. Just well, the
market kind of does recalibrate and we can see, all right,

(41:15):
where is people's propensity to spend at the moment. Because
it used to be I'll go to Grapevine, I've got
to be on the valley, I'll chop pop up to
Bali and you know, maybe we'll save up again and
do Europe next year. Now people aren't distinguishing where this
dollar goes between the fashion item that they're going to
spend on the holiday of Europe or the music festivals.
It's kind of like it's one or the other, and
they're all competing.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
For you mean, they're just making one one bet yep,
one bet.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
Well, I'll pick one thing for music. That's my one
festival for the year. I'll do my one trip for
the thing, and I'll get my one item. And sometimes
if if it all kind of compounds, they go, you
know what, I won't go to any vessel, I'm gonna
put it all into my Europe trip or you know,
I think I think that's that's been a.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
Big like is it good that younger people?

Speaker 3 (41:57):
It's not good, but it is good. I'm thinking about
I'm not to spend anywhere. I'm going to say, for
a deposit to buy our house, my first house. We've
all realized that that's that's too hard.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
No.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
Yeah, so your cohort of.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
You know, your audience, your community is thinking, well, I'm
not going to afford a house.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
But I'm me and my mates.

Speaker 3 (42:14):
We're all going to rend this joint down the corner
and we're going to do our best and we're going
to build our business or build our career, et cetera.
But we do need to spoil ourselves. I'm not spoil
us us. We need to invest in ourselves. And I
love music, so I'm going to go to a music festival.
Is that what you're finding? Like you finding that's the
mentality the mindset.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
Or no, yes, But it's the investment. It's not saying
I'm going to invest in myself. I'm going to invest
in where I want to spend my money, and that
could be across leisure, travel, music. But they're spending their
money essentially.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
But they're not buying a property.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
But they're not Yeah, they're not buying a property. And
I think there might be a conscious shift maybe towards
the late twenties, early thirties where they you know, people
are going, Okay, it's time for me to kind of
really shift into gear now. And I guess, yeah, we
can see that with our audience. Is it gets that
tail end of the database. They're probably less active for us.
You know, who knows in five years it might be
untitled homelans. You know.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
Yeah, well it's good.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
It's funny, she said, because I was listening to someone
talk the other day who's an hour and political analyst,
and he was going back forty years and he said
that typically people come out of university, let's say thirty
forty years ago. They have a degree, but they're very
They're more likely to vote labor when they first come
out of university. But then over a period, if they

(43:29):
get a partner, they start having a kid, and they
start to move.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
More to the right, more to conservative. Interesting not to write,
but say conservative.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
So they started to thinking themselves, hang on, labor is
not quite there for me because right now where I
wanted to do was I want to buy myself a
house and I need a good income, I need to
have a mist in a operator of city economy.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
And I'm starting to change my view.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
And if I look at the Daily Os, Daily OS
is talking to it's actually starting to change a little
bit itself.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
The Daily Os.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
I think the Daily Os one of your investments that is, yeah, well,
I think one of the reasons why we also like
the dahiels as well. For me, in my opinion, is
probably one of the most non partis and places that
you can go and get informed about.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
It's a good barometer too.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
It is a good barometer to go and get information
on politics and what we're finding now again through researching
out audience and whatnot a lot of younger audiences that
have had no experience in coming across politics and have
been told now you've got to vote. The dais educating
them a lot about what does this mean, what's a
spill vert, what's this? You know, all these various concepts
which I think they're doing a really great job in

(44:29):
covering the election. And I think, you know, I think
what the last two prime ministers that were elected both
chose to do interviews with the Dahlias. Those are the
other two candidates that rejected were unsuccessful.

Speaker 3 (44:41):
So yeah, but I because I think it's a very
clever investment from your group to invest in something like
the Daily Os, because there's actually sort of to something said,
does a bit of research for you and their audiences.
They're picking up with the younger people as well, but
their audience, who they've already picked up many years ago,
is growing into an older audience too. Actually got this
difficult task of producing articles and news to satisfy the

(45:10):
newer crowd nine twenty year olds and also the role
of a crowded sort of close to your age, and
and and they've got this game. It's a little bit
like what you're doing to to something.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
It's actually funny. Yeah, And it's one of the things
that you know now they've just launched the sports newsletter
and now music and culture newsletter to appeal to I
guess these people, and I guess only through that discourse
with their audience, they say what do you want to
hear more of? And the two biggest things that kind
of came about from that where people wanted to hear
one more good news because there's so much you know,

(45:42):
crap out there, and yeah, I wanted to hear more
about sports and music and culture. So creating these other
tale you know, these other avenues on the Dahiels has
been really great. And again when we say we do this,
it's Sam Zara and the amazing team there. I think
that's the other thing is that when we work with companies,
we work with company is that really embody the values
we have. It was untitled and really aligned with with us.

(46:04):
And when we first met them, we just kind of
saw what they were doing and they were just really
again you know, bootstrapped, hard, young passionate journalists that wanted
to do something different, to change it up. And it's
really hard in their industry as well, which is dominated
by these goliaths. And I think they've done a really
really good job at that well.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
Also, and when Zara was on, she also talked about
the political problems, you know, wars to Gaza and Israel
and all that sort of stuff, and the personal conflicts
that she had in relation to these sort of sorts
of things where you might have a personal view, but
you can't push your personal view down someone, so you
have to try and be in the middle somehow, and
that's a difficult one.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Does that apply in the same in the music industry?

Speaker 3 (46:43):
So do you if you love somebody as a band,
do you get the you know, the joy of saying, well,
I don't give a stuff with anything.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
So I'm going to get this this mob up there
on the stage.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
It's actually really funny. That's the one thing I think
music and particularly fescal should be is a borderless celebration
where everyone can come and enjoy whatever type of style
or genre thing that they love. Like there's a lot
of talk about multi genre vestals being dead, like you know,
the likes of it, and I think that's crap because

(47:15):
you look at our lineup for Be on the Valley
this year. We've got Kid Cutting, one of the greatest rappers,
a nostalgic rapper, Addison Ray, one of the hottest big
pop stars, Dom Dollar huge, huge, ashianing DJ making ways
around the world. You've got electronic pop, rock, turnstyle, totally
different genres, totally different genres, and I think the best
thing is at one place and the best part is

(47:37):
that you can to kind of choose your own adventure.
You can have someone at one stage that's listening to
a band that they've discovered from the first time and
I was the locals band. But while someone's listening to
some techno and another thing, while someone's at doctor Dan
stage watching local DJ you know, play tributes at for
Dan or something. And I think that's the biggest thing.
But we do get scrutinized, and as we've kind of

(47:57):
gotten bigger and bigger when we are now see our
festival one up this year, there was a lot a
lot of negative comments. Really yeah, because you don't realize
that when there's so many eyeballs on you and you're
putting something out there. If forty thousand people are coming
to the festival and seventy eighty thousand people signed up,
that means there's over a quarter of a million, you know,

(48:19):
three hundred thousand people that are all seeing this thing,
and you're not gonna be everyone's cup of tea. And
I think the more that we kind of learned that
we again we were so about this discourse of experience
and taking feedback and everything, but not letting things throw
you off course. If you know you can, you can

(48:39):
make a rash decision or think you've screwed something up
just because of online commentary. And I think the more
that you just kind of straight true to your course
while taking feedback on I think is kind of that
nice little middle ground to pay.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
Do you give a You're obviously too young to any
of these things, But do you ever think of Woodstock
and go right back to the days of Aquarius and
all those sorts of things I did with sixty seventies?
Do you think about those sort of romantic to me?
And I remember those days mad romantic periods. I don't
mean like love romance, but like a romantic period for

(49:10):
music and festivals, and it was all new then.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
Yeah. I mean, I've watched the Woodstock documentary. Oh. A
lot of people always come on to me and they go,
did you watch the was it the Uh? There's the
Woodstock one and then there's the Firefes documentary, And I said, yes,
I did, and it gave me PTSD of that first
year of Beyond the Valley because that was us running
around as nineteen year olds, never running a camp because

(49:35):
we didn't have radios. So when there was a gap
in the fence and people were going through that, I'd
have to sprint the security and go hey, but quick
get this here, sprint back and it was absolute chaos.
We ran on the side of a cliff on Philip
Ilan back when the old pyramid rockside where tents were
flying over. The stage was shaking and the councils there
taking measurements. Rufus sol set had to be delayed and

(49:57):
almost in play. But people don't see the else behind
the scenes. But there's this magic to when it does happen,
it does get there and again people are like, oh yeah,
our tent bull off. The equivalent was crap in that,
but geez, it wasn't at a great time. And that
same romance that you get from your woodstocks and things
like that. It's just constant reincarnations for new generations. Now
there's young kids that come up to me at our

(50:19):
events and go, oh, Mike, Mike, I just want to
say I met my partner here. You know a lot
of people, you know, and we've been to all seven
Beyond the Valleys and they both show me their wrists
and they'll have seven wristbands on and I go, that's
so beautiful. Please take a shower cut them off, because
that's and then let's go have a drink.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
If you go right back in history, music festivals have
always been held. Do you think to be yourself that
this will the music festivals will stop because of the
regulatory environments we have today, particularly you know here in
Australia and probably more so in the state of Victoria,
which is pretty you know, non nanny state, but like
there's the rules for everything.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Do you think that actually regulated?

Speaker 2 (51:01):
I think New South Wales has been a wou surprise
you you New South Wales has been the nanny state,
and particularly like what happened with the lockdown laws here,
there's a lot of work that needs to be done
to overturn particularly the over policing and the hard presence,
you know, like drugs.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
Do you think do you think all that stuff is
going to kill off your game and or how do
you keep ahead of that?

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Yeah? No, no, I don't think so. But I think
it's we have to look at how it's damaging and
how it's harming and have a great discourse with the
government about going. Music vessels are going to always exist.
It's a part of culture. As you said, if it
we need it, we need it, you know. And that
study that research that we did with Creative Australia. It
was very important that we demonstrated that the sense of belonging,

(51:43):
the connection music Fessel, people going to music Fessel is
so good for people's mental health and their life that
that's what the real investment is. And I think, so
we're not we're not going anywhere, but it's about how
can we best work in with to create a safe environment,
you know, where people everyone that comes to our vessels,
you know, goes home safe. And yeah, look, drugs are everywhere.

Speaker 3 (52:07):
They're just they're just around, especially in Sydney. Yeah, one
of the greatest cocaine using cities in the world, do
you know.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
I think this company of the Daily Alas did a
great report on that. I think.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
And my mates and the cops tell me that per
capita we pay more in any place in the world
for a grammar cocaine and we use more cocaine per
capita than any place.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
In the world. And you talked about the difference in
cities and per capita, Melbourne is the highest use of
ketamine use.

Speaker 1 (52:37):
Wow. Serious, Why hell was someone who just want to
keep you know, I had to have an.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
Operational little while ago and I've had many operative and
I said to the dude, what did you put in
the He said, I have three ingredients.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
One of them was ketamine. And I said, well, he said,
I was so basically paralyzed you.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
And I thought, why would you have to? I mean,
now you're getting my bio chemistry science degree come back
to you. But you know, ket meane, it's an amazing molecule.
And you know, even overseas they're looking at the great
kind of effects you know, things like ketamine, MDM A psilocybin.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
Have on you know, if you're taking a small doses.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
No, no, no, I mean, oh, but okay. In terms
of the ketamine that we're having over here, people are
more so taking small doses of it to kind of
get that woozy effect of being a bit drunk or
a bit tipicar.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
That's why they do it.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Yeah, And again, if you look back on why people
are like is ketemine is such a popular drug right
now people can well have a pay whatever they're paying
for a small bag of ketamine and that might last
some the whole weekend or something, right versus their friend
that's drinking and saying, oh, I bought six beers here
three busy out and spent two hundred dollars. I think

(53:44):
there's an element of it that people are more health conscious,
but there's an element of this kind of cost cost
will kind of force people to kind of seek out.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
An ultimate cost efficiencies.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Yeah, well, well people are you know, I want the effect,
but I don't want to spend as much. Yeah, and
you'll get that effect, you know obviously as people don't
drink or do drugs. But if I'm somebody that's looking
to enhance my experience, and again this was again backed
by data and research. We asked a question and we
were very kind of careful about how we did it.
It was I choose to enhance my experience in alternate ways.

(54:17):
We allowed people anonymously to give us answers, and all
the data that was coming through this research we do
with Creative Australia was that the cost of I want
to enhance my experience. I want to drink or be social,
et cetera, but the cost of drinking is too high
and I choose to enhance it in other ways because
it's more cost effective.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
And do you get back to governments and say, look
to government or whoever regulated. Look, people want these festivals
no matter what. We've got a good product.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
We wanted to be a safe environment and an uplifting environment,
an environment and an outcome that people remember and enjoy.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
You the government, could you can you work together? Can
we work together?

Speaker 3 (54:56):
And because you've got a responsibility to do that with
the government, because the governm wouldn't not I'm going to
gross to speaking imers do not know, they don't.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
Know what you know, they don't have your data.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Well that's that's the reason why I think when you
look at why us and the dailys is such a
good partnership is we know young people better than i'd
say other businesses out in the market. Anybody's trying to
market them to them, and particularly government, you know, don't
know the you know, don't know how to don't know
young people as well as they should, or don't know
how to discourse with them. So it's how can we
find that mutual objective and then help them deliver that message.

(55:24):
And we're very, very proud that we were the first
festival to do pill testing over the Year's Eve in Victoria.
You know, very successful. We had over five hundred people
that came and used the Drug Service a lot of them.
I think it was over seventy percent of responders. It
was their first time having an open conversation about drugs
and the impacts of drugs, and I think eighty percent
of them came out of it saying that they will

(55:45):
be using drugs less or can reconsidering taking what they
took after they found out what was actually in the thing,
because people are even taking things something like ketamine, which
is meant to be a pure substance that you can
take happy hospitals or not, and going, well, this is
actually isn't just.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Ketamine, it's X, Y and z's so some other shit. Yeah,
And I think that's I think.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
I think education is a real key around around that.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
So to some extent, you guys have to take on
that when you talk about diversity diversification, to some extent,
that has to be part of your product that we're
here to educate as well, because it's overy L said,
we wanted to give you a safe enviroum, but you
should educate people about this stuff.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
One hundred percent, I think education is key. You know,
you look at a lot of and I won't go
into specific instances, but you look at a lot of
bad instances of people and you know, pronominantly they've been
through more old fessels that have happened here in New
South Wales. But someone's first encounter with drugs is buying
something going to take into a festival and being greeted

(56:41):
by a wall of police and dogs and everything like that,
and then quickly going I'm just going to take these
drugs without knowing you know, what dose I'm taking in
that's that's one of really jarring or can be lethal,
you know, yeah, And that's what we not never want
to happen at any one of our events. We don't
want anybody to be panicking or taking not taking you know. Well,
you know again the first dance is always we prefer

(57:03):
you don't do drugs. And drugs can be bad and
you don't know what's in them, et cetera. But we
have to be realist and that people are going to
be taking drugs whether you're at a fessel or at
the pub for years, and if these things are present,
how can we give them a safe environment? How can
we educate them and have the resource for there for
to do things like testing or you know, great organizations

(57:24):
like dance wise, which is a setup in our vessels.
That's a step before going to if you want to
go to you know the paramedic and everything, you can
just go into a safe space and talk to trained
people that know how to go being judged without being judged.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
So what's coming up? What's coming up? What's ahead of
us for you? For you guys, well, I.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
Mean big mileson this year is ten year Beyond the Valley,
forty thousand people is twenty twenty five, twenty twenty five,
ye twenty twenty five. You know there's a lot. I
mean right now currently we're on tour with the Roofs
to Solve. So the same band that helps us launch
Beyond the Valley ten years Agoes, you know, doing a
record breaking arena tour across the country, got three sold
out kudos.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
I'm not just Victory out across Australia. They said they're
doing a cutos They've.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
They've sold out ten arenas across the country and these
were all the bands, so all the artists that we
started with back from that nightclub. You know Resident DJ
that with ours Dom Dolla is going out selling selling
out tens of down tickets all around the world, roofs
to Soul doing huge numbers, Fisher flew all these kind
of Australian. Australian dance is paving the way around the world.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Really yeah, how cool is that? It's fantastic and feel
part of that though.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
It feels fantastic because like even growing up, my dad
and my uncle talks so much about the Aussie pub
rock scene and we used to see a CDC back then.
I remember when I saw this and it's funny, like
the pub rock scene is great, but it's not what
it used to be when bands would just get in
a bus and tour around and again, because the costs
are doing everything so high. What we have now are
this great clubbing scenes around the country of DJs that

(58:55):
are kind of going around And I really think that
the biggest musical export to electronic artists for Australia at
the moment. And that's a really great to be a point.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
When you say exports, you talk about people you've you're
now seeing who should be exportable.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
People are actually doing it.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
It's happening right now. So when you say you know
what's next, I mean those two artists that are named
Dondal and ruf Tersol we've worked with for over a
decade now doing record breaking numbers around the world. But
now we also and going to back to diversification. You know,
we've got a great management roster of artists that we're
working with directly.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
So you have you have a managing business as well
that managers artists correct emerging artists or.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
No, no, so well that they were emerging artists, but
they're now doing their in their own right. You know
two artists, Stim and Sam Alfred Young DJs that we've
spotted talent that have been at our vessels and playing
these amazing slots. And again you're noticing specials there from
being there on the ground when you're there and you
see the groundswell of the festival kind of fill up
at a stage for a local DJ. Yeah, there was

(59:53):
just a really good Now they're smashing it on stages overseas,
so being part of that journey with the artists is
really cool.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
And what's untitled management business called?

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
So uh, it's it's actually quite funny. It's just untitled
management at the moment, is it. It's kind of under
just under that banner.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
Yeah, because because I'm just trying to get a sense
of your structure. So you've got headstock at the top.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Yeah, so we've got untitled group yep. Then you've got
our fessels and events. So under that you've got Beyond
the Valley, a grapevine gathering. Ability Fest. I probably didn't
touch on ability. Are you familiar with?

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
What is that?

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
So?

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Ability Fest is the show's first fully inclusive fessel. It's
aimed to normal disability. They came. They came across a
conversation that we had with Dylan Olcott at was eight seven,
eight years ago, and Dylan was saying that and again
through a tending hour of it is it?

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Is it for people with disabilities who as audience or
as artists? No?

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
So what it's a it's a fessel that caters for
people of all levels of abilities. And we wanted to
make that really clear that it's a festal not for
people with disabilities and not for people you know, it's
it's a festival where includes everybody, includes everybody. And that's
a big thing that Dylan drove home with us as
he goes. You know, I always feel welcome and catered
for your events, but you know, not all events are

(01:01:11):
like this. Is not all events are fully accessible. And
through doing Ability Fest and seeing just how far we
were able to kind of, you know, have people with
any different form of disabilities, So people down syndroom, several pausy, deaf, blind,
having sensory rooms, accessible pathways, viewing platforms, guides and seeing
people that have not experienced live music before have the
ability to come and experience live music for the first

(01:01:32):
time and the profound impact that that has on them.
It's such a special event, while at the same time
raising money for the Dealing Old Colt Foundation. So I
think in the couple events that we've had, we've raised
over one and a half million dollars for the Dealing
Old Coot Foundation. But I think the best thing that's
came about from that is the learnings that we then
consistently take and then implementing to other events, one step

(01:01:53):
at a time, how can we make it more accessible,
more inclusive. And you know, shout out to Dylan for
you know, I guess coming to us with this great
idea and initiative and this journey we've been on together
has been really very special.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
He's good man.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
So I've gone off on a team got abilities beyond
the valley pitch vessel ability that's grapevine gathering, so all
the fessel and events. Then we've got our touring division,
so we tour artists outside of the events. So at
the moment we're touring Roofs to Soul a good shot.
We just announced there. We come back to it Australia
which has got everyone really pumped. Routine Clan and a

(01:02:27):
whole bunch of Mile and Hoff Sad all these artists.
So events and vessels, touring. Then we've got Proxy, our
bookings agency, so we do all the bookings for Australian
artists around Australasia. Our management division so when.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
You say book agency, so if someone outside of Australia
wants to book a particular artist, they go through Proxy.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Particularly in mainly Australasia where we represent. But yeah, we
represent a lot of talent for bookings and now we're
starting to really actively build out our management roster so
we can manage artists, give them opportunity to build a
platform in Australia and kind of export them abroad, which
is which is really exciting. And then outside of that
then we've also got Underscore which is our creative agency.

(01:03:11):
We do a lot of kind of influencer bread brand
work with that, and the agency is kind of and
then obviously outside that ugly vodka, et cetera. And what
we've really created is ecosystem of kind of divisions that
all kind of sit underneath untitled, but they all really
work in with each other collaboratively. So I think, you know,
back when it was just me and my three business partners,

(01:03:32):
there was four of us wearing all the hats, doing everything.
And as we kind of started getting into the habit of,
you know, hiring friends.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
And.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
It was still then there was five or six or
seven of us, but it was still everyone doing everything
all at once, and there was no clear structure. So again,
going into COVID, we were able to go, really go
what other separations of business units? What are the roles
that we need within those business units? And I think
a really big, a big kind of stepping stone for
us was hiring in general and appointing someone that can

(01:04:01):
really bring those four brains into one. And I think
that's really important because you know, you talk, we spoke
a lot about mentorship before, but you know, I consider
my business partners even mentors because we all think so differently.
You know, each of us has got a really different
approach to business and how you know, I can be
creative and energetic and inspiring and create these ideas, but

(01:04:23):
the lens in which one of my partners will kind
of bring it back to reality, and another one another one,
and then between the four of us we always land
somewhere that's dead center. We did a personality test when
we first started the business, and the lady that did
the test was quite amaze. She goes, I've never seen
this before and turned it around and we came out
like a perfect star, which was actually fantastic. So all
individual separate quadrants of our shapes of the diamond. And

(01:04:47):
so between the four of us, we've ultimately got to
come up with always be aligned and.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
So you have a deal like let's all vote on it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
And it's been that way since the start. We you know,
people talk about conflict resolution and how do you go
about with your you know, how with you guys having oh,
three business partners, that's not going to last. So I
think there's an element of respect and respecting what the
strengths and weaknesses of each partner is and leaning into
them more. If anything, that's something that we've really been
able to do as the kind of business goes from

(01:05:15):
strength to strength, leaning into those strengths, respecting your partners,
and then aligning through the new structure we have and
you know, funneling throughout our general manager and now all
the business divisions that we have. That's what's really allowed
us to go from these seven staff to the now
you know, seventy plus that we have seventy plus now, Yeah,
across all the different.

Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
Yeah, that's a lot of people, though when you consider
you just had six or seven people at the end
of COVID.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
Yeah, No, definitely, And to be honest, a lot of
every time there's great new faces in the team. I
love having conversations with the new people that we meet
in the office because everybody's got a different story about
how they come across untitled group and what makes them
want to work in the industry. And I think that's
a really important thing as well. Is that discourse that
we used to have going back to the nightclubs or anything. Again,

(01:06:02):
I'm having that internally with the young people that we
hire in our office. And this is how there's this
one great example that I didn't know who this artist
was that we always get constantly offered artists. And I
just went downstairs and I went on the balcony just
yelled out the artist name ran Win. I saw three
heads pop up, and I said, what what about him?
I said, you three coming to this room right now?
Tell me everything about it, you know, And I love

(01:06:24):
I love that that cross pollination of someone in ticketing
or someone in finance or someone in ops might be
able to so those divisions that I mentioned before, you know,
there's obviously extend extensions of that. You've got you know,
your finance, ticketing, operations, et cetera. But everyone's welcome to
kind of comment on whether they think we should be
promoting a certain artist or things that we should be

(01:06:45):
aware of. And and you've got such a rich, rich
history of people that have worked in and around music
that that our team, that knowledge that these seventy plus
stuff have and that energy is really vital to to
I guess the success.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
Of the companies sort of like sound like a sort
of flat strike in terms of people's opinions.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
Yeah, yeah, yes, it's always encouraged. But you can also
create those things whereas you never want to have too
many cooks in too many cooks in the kitchen. It
ultimately comes down to the one decision maker, and for us,
it's a lot of the day it's who's acting as
the promoter. For I said to you know, the buck
stops with them if they say the ticket price is good,
the ticket price is good, if they say they should

(01:07:22):
be playing this venue. But we really do take all
the pings on from all of our team, and I
love getting suggestions from my team of new ways that
we could be doing things differently. You know, good Charlotte,
We're doing a show out in Bendigo bending a race course.
We're in collaboration with the Victorian government. Rather than doing

(01:07:43):
a standard arena like rod Laver Arena rod Laver Arena,
very fixed kind of plug and play into stadium, by
doing it out in Bendigo, we're injecting millions of dollars
into the regional economy, hiring way more labor, et cetera
to build the show. And one of the world's most
iconic kind of punk rock bands are playing out in
Benigo race course.

Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
I think that's fantastic and actually and the governments like that,
state coups like that, and they sometimes they live and
contribute to something that might throw the venue in for
nothing whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:08:10):
Well that's so, that's what the Victorian governments that they've
contributed to this show in collaboration to make it. It
wouldn't have been possible without them, and you know, I'm very,
very thankful we've worked with the Victorian government to do
Austrain exclusive concerts for the likes of Zach Bryan or
Great Country, one of the world's biggest country acts, Christine
Aguilera Anama huge, huge electronic artist that does a big
audio visual show. And that funding that we receive from

(01:08:34):
the government is kind of tied into tourism initiatives or
economic impact injections that we can do, and we're constantly
delivering for the government and I think we're doing a
great job. I think the lens in which I'm encouraging
governments to shift is that not everything is a dollar.

Speaker 3 (01:08:49):
Dollar.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
You invest one, you get this tourism between invests, you
get that because with music there's a lot more to that.
There's a lot more of the you touched it before,
the magic that the romance, the psychological components, the well being,
sense of community that come into it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
The people I met.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Yeah, the people I met, my partners were this and
I think investing in festivals and live music for Australia
is investing in the mental health and well being of
young Australians.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
I think that's a good point for us.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
We'll probably stop there because I think that's a very
good way to stop this and finish off, because it
is good for the mental health. In fact, everybody wants
to say it's the opposite in terms of the dangers,
but really, if you can control the dangers, manages the
risks which you guys seem to be doing and may
be aware of them, then you can actually blow up
the benefits how good they're going to be, because the

(01:09:38):
benefits are much greater.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
And it's funny, you know, in this country we tend
to always.

Speaker 3 (01:09:40):
Look at the risks of the risks, of the risk
we experience that during COVID, by the way, you know,
we forget about the benefits of what we're taking away
from everybody and community being part of something. Listening in music,
I mean I mad music. Maybe not necessarily the artist
you're talking about, but I have music only twenty four
hours and in my house twenty four hours out.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
I never turn it off.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
You know it's you know, it's either blues, jazz, classic,
it's just going twenty four hours ago. I can't live
without having music in my in the background. And and
for people love concerts and you know, live live events,
I can understand exactly where they're coming from. So my
proceed is actually, you know, you know what I think
is quite amazing this conversation. Not on the business you're built.

(01:10:22):
You're you're pretty young, although you probably to the young
people in your business, they probably think you're ancient, but
you're pretty young, and in relatively speaking, you build a
great business.

Speaker 2 (01:10:33):
But I just love energy.

Speaker 3 (01:10:34):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
You're so fucking energetic, dude, Like it's mad.

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
It might be a bit of the ADHD, which apparently
everybody has nowadays.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
We all got it so but but your energy is mad.
For a business, you need to be like that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
If you want to run a business successfully, you need
to have at least one of the four people to
be that dude, and you need someone else to balance.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
It up again, pulling back, pulling back, Hey, hang on,
why don't let's.

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
Have a look at it, unwrap it a bit, and
so you test it. But you need that person first
nothing happens otherwise.

Speaker 2 (01:11:06):
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, well, because I often yeah, I
think it wouldn't be anywhere without the three partners.

Speaker 3 (01:11:11):
That I have, But they wouldn't be anywhere. They would
have nothing to work back on unless I had someone
like you. So it's a great symbiotic relationship and that's
why businesses work at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
Well done, mate, Congratulations, Thank you Marke.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
I appreciate it. Thanks having me

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