George Hartley // From Bandmate And Business Analyst To Building Bluethumb

Many of our guests on the show tell incredible stories of trying lots of different things they don’t really love before stumbling on a particular yay that changes their life. What has fascinated me about George Hartley since the day we first met is that he’s loved then left lots of different yays to end up in his current chapter in an industry he originally knew absolutely nothing about. I was first introduced to George as the co-founder and Chief Marketing/Product Officer of Bluethumb, Australia's largest online art marketplace, which he describes as “Soundcloud but for art”. Launched in 2012, Bluethumb connects over 20,000 Australian artists with collectors, facilitating the sale of more than 100,000 original artworks to date with around half a million dollars worth of art currently for sale.

How he has completely revolutionised a whole industry and grown the business to extraordinary heights just recently launching in the USA is a fascinating story in itself. I did not, however, expect to ask about his background in the art world and hear him say, “oh no, I know nothing about it”. While I’ve always been a proponent of finding a business idea out of a gap in the market that you experience yourself as a consumer, George is an amazing example that you can absolutely reverse engineer a business without any prior connections, qualifications or a foot in the door (and that this can often be an advantage). Instead, he began by studying marketing and accountant at uni, had a whole marketing career which he then left to do music full time, which he in turn left to do a Master’s in computer science and work in UX design all before Bluethumb began… I LOVED our first chat at a founders dinner and have been wanting to continue it, so you guys just happen to benefit too! I hope you enjoy as much as I did.

LINKS

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Follow George here.
Listen to Art in My Home podcast here.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I just kind of think about it as like the
spins are the rule at wheel. You know, it's if
you think about it like it's a game to keep playing.
If you keep spinning the rule that will, you're going
to hit the jackpot. And the people who get somewhere,
the people who just keep spinning. Two friends that at
outwears Great Dev's helped me and they built this beautiful
app for us, and we submitted it and oh great,
you get an A but Apple featured it and we

(00:22):
immediately got seven thousand users overnight. Oh man, that was
our first big kind of kick.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Welcome to the Sees the Yay Podcast. Busy and happy
are not the same thing. We too rarely question what
makes the heart seeing. We work, then we rest, but
rarely we play and often don't realize there's more than
one way. So this is a platform to hear and
explore the stories of those who found lives. They adore,
the good, bad and ugly, The best and worst day

(00:50):
will bear all the facets of seizing your yay. I'm
Sarah Davidson or a spoonful of Sarah, a lawyer turned
funentrepreneur who swapped the suits and heels to co found
Matcha Maiden and Matcha Milk Bark CZA is a series
of conversations on finding a life you love and exploring
the self doubt, challenge, joy and fulfillment along the way.

(01:14):
Many of our guests on the show tell incredible stories
of trying lots of different things that they don't really
love before stumbling on a particular YA that then changes
their life. What has fascinated me about George Hartley since
the day we first met is that he's loved then
left lots of different yays to end up in his
current chapter in an industry that he originally knew absolutely

(01:36):
nothing about. I was first introduced to George as the
co founder and chief Marketing and Product officer of Blue Thumb,
Australia's largest online art marketplace, which many of you have
probably already heard of or purchased from, but if you haven't,
George describes it as the SoundCloud of art. Launched in
twenty twelve, blue Thumb connects over twenty thousand Australian artists

(01:57):
with collectors, facilitating the sale of more than one hundred
thousand original artworks to date, with around half a million
dollars worth of art currently for sale. How he has
completely revolutionized the art industry, which was previously quite inaccessible
and intimidating with laws of middlemen, and then grown the
Bluethorm business to extraordinary heights, having recently launched in the USA.

(02:19):
Is a fascinating story in itself. I didn't, however, expect
to ask about his prior connections to the art world
and where the idea was spawned, only to hear him say, oh, no,
I know nothing about art. While I've always been a
pretty big proponent of finding a business idea out of
a gap in the market that you stumble upon yourself
as a consumer, so you have a personal connection. George

(02:41):
is an amazing example that you can, of course reverse
engineer a business by perceiving a gap in the market
without any prior connections, qualifications, or a foot in the door,
and that that can often in fact be an advantage.
Much to my surprise, he actually began by studying marketing
and accounting at UNI, had an entire marketing Korea. He

(03:01):
then left to do music full time, which he then interned,
left to do a master's in computer science, and then
worked in ux design, all before Blue Thumb began. I
loved our first chat at a founder's dinner where this
all unraveled, and have been wanting to continue it in
depth so much, and you guys just happened to benefit
from that too, so I hope you all enjoy. George,

(03:24):
Welcome to SEZ THEA.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Thanks Sarah. Great to be here.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Oh it's so so lovely to see you. How do
we make friends? It's a bit random. I was a customer,
then we connected online, and then we met like a
week later out of the blue at an event, but
I did know you were going to be here. And
one of my new best friends is your wife, so

(03:48):
we have so many different connections.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Absolutely. Yeah. She's a huge fan of the pod, like
super fan, and when I told her I chatted at
that dinner, she was like, oh, oh my god, you
have to go on the pod. So yeah, she's like,
I'm excited to be here, and she's even more excited.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
It's actually the sweetest. She came for the start of
this session today, so I got to meet her in
real life, and I absolutely love that I have a
super fan. I didn't even know they existed, so that's
just absolutely delightful. Thank you for bringing the AA to
my dad. Well, I'm so excited to have you here
because I had been a customer of Blue Thumb before

(04:29):
I knew any of your story. And of course, the
natural assumption is that art is in your background or
in your history or family, or that there's some kind
of logical connection. But one of my favorite parts of
CZA is finding pathways that don't necessarily make as much sense,
and they have lots of different dots that connect in
different ways. So there was an AFI article about you
that I came across about the business in my research,

(04:53):
and it was all about music, not art, nothing to
do with art. Yes, So the beginning of your story
is actually much more musical. Tell us about your childhood
and what you thought you'd kind of be back then.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, well yeah, Blue Thumb kind of. I guess it's
the is the second big thing I've done with my life.
My you know, I always thought I'd be a musician,
and that was my one like one searing passion was music,
I guess, So yeah, I sort of always just loved
music playing, you know, growing up I played in bands.

(05:26):
I played the trombone and the bass guitar as well
and keyboards, and I'd always had bands with my best
friends when when we were kind of in high school
and then at university, and even I worked as an
English teacher in Japan.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
I formed a band.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Random, so I finished the Minion and then I went
to Japan to teach English. But I joined a band
over there, like a Japanese rock band, and I was
the bass player, and well, yeah, we played a whole
bunch of great shows as well while I was doing that.
And I came back and I grew up in Adelaide,
and I chose to move to Melbourne because this is
kind of like the cultural harb is where the best
music was, all right, and I just wanted to be

(06:03):
surrounded by it. And so I kind of i'd finished
university and I went into marketing because I didn't really
know what else to do. And I was playing in
bands here in Melbourne, and a few years into marketing,
I was sort of like, I'm not very good at this.
I was at a big ard agency. I slacked at it,

(06:23):
and I was like there must be more, you know,
So I quit and I went to play music full
time in my twenties for a few years, and after
about you know, mid to late twenties, it just wasn't happening,
and it was really hard, and it was really hard
to think you only want to do one thing, and
like I felt like I was only really good at
that one thing. Well, it's all you've done, It's all

(06:45):
I'd really focused on. Yeah, it'd been just my passion,
and so I'm like it was one of those really
hard moments where I'm like, if this isn't working, then
what you know? And it was literally around that time,
I was probably twenty six. I got an iPhone. I'm like, oh, I.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Love this, Hello New World.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, and I started reading the jobs biography at the
same time, like, oh, this is interesting, and I kind
of thought back on actually, I also have loved technology,
used to make websites for friends. I'd always be there,
sort of the technology person, and I did like it.
I was going to study it at union. Then I
didn't see it, Like I took the advice to someone
who said, oh, you'll be plugging in cables at Telstra, Like,

(07:23):
oh god, that sounds like death on a stick. I'm
not going to study that. So but I got you know,
I got a twenty at school for it, and I
was good at it, and I liked it, and I'm like, actually,
I think I like that as well. So I made
this kind of this big call and I just stopped
music and studied study computer science, and that kicked off
what I'm doing now. Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
That in itself is before we even get to the
second big iteration of your career. The fact that you
had this one searing passion, and that is also like,
I think the arts is something that people are also
often discouraged from because it is so hard and it's
so competitive and you're never going to make it and
blah blah blah. The fact that you actually quit everything,
you've done one big leap of faith. You've quit everything,

(08:03):
quit your marketing job to go into music. That already
is a huge theme in CZA taking a big risk
on something, but often the story is looking back, you
took a risk and it worked, but you took a
risk and it didn't necessarily work out the way that
you'd hope, And like, I think, I think we also
come to see failure as like a big scary thing
that's awful, and then your life will be over. But

(08:24):
that led to this pivot, which then led to the
coolest thing ever. So I love this. There's so many
themes in the story already that are amazing. But before
we get to the sort of more computer science tech
part and then the Blue Thumb story, can you talk
us through the mindset that you had at the time,
because I think it's easy to tell it now that
we know that it's all worked out for you, But

(08:45):
at the time, when you've been passionate about something your
whole life, you have risked everything. How did you confront
that feeling of failure or the feeling of like, what
else do I do? Because I think one of the
big things we do as humans is we stilo ourselves
into I'm a musician, or I'm creative, or I'm not creative,
or I'm a numbers person, and then we think you

(09:05):
can't be anything else ever, But I think we're actually
really agile and versatile. But you have to let yourself.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yeah, absolutely no. And it felt scary, like it felt
petrifying at the time to do, but also it's sort
of I do like trying things. I do like I
like the feeling of progressing at something, and I think
most people do you know whether you're it's a skill
or a hobby or a new kind of work stream.

(09:33):
I like that feeling of becoming better at something, progressing,
you know, towards mastery, and so I kind of thought
about it like that a little bit as well. I'm like, oh, look,
you know, maybe wor at worst kind of I can
pick my base up again, but at least I'll learn
how to kind of make apps, you know, make websites.
So I kind of thought about it that way at

(09:54):
the time. But you know, looking back, it's like, I'm
so glad my path led me here. Yeah, and you know,
of course it was a good idea to like go
into tech. Of course it was a good idea to
become you know, to join an app developer and then
start Blue Thumb and then you know, raise money and
all this stuff. But at the time petrified these moments. Yeah,

(10:15):
you don't know what to do, but I did, you know,
optimize towards kind of action and just trying something so
and you have less to lose than you realize. Yes,
you know, it's actually you never regret action, really, you know,
I only ever regret in action.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
It's so true. I love that you can remember that.
It was petrifying because I think often people who are
listening to the podcast often tune in because they're in
that earlier phase where it hasn't worked out yet, and
they are in that like, oh my god, this thing
hasn't worked out or I haven't quite found my blue
thumb yet. But even going back to UNI as kind

(10:52):
of in an industry that you hadn't you know, done
your undergrady, and even that's overwhelming. What was that like?

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Well, I was going through some boxes the other day
and I found the rejection letter from r MIT. No,
what I've forgotten? I got rejected really because I applied
for a Masters of Computer Science and I didn't have
an undergrade in computer programming, and I.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Didn't you did it becom right?

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah? Yeah, I did become Yeah, and I'd forgotten it,
like I've got a terrible memory there, I forget bloody everything.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
I'm the same, I've watched the same So this is
such an aside, but mine is so bad that I
watched Chernobyl the series, like I've watched the entire thing.
I knew i'd watched the entire thing, but I was like, oh,
it's been long enough, I've forgotten it. I'll go back
to the start. I watched episode six first, but because
it's all out of order, I was like, oh, this
is episode one. Didn't know got to the end. The

(11:39):
black and white credits came up at the end saying
and then this person went to jail, and I was like,
that's weird that they did that in episode one. It
was like, I have absolutely lost my marvel. So I'm
with you.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah, no, that's a great series. I've got to rewatch it.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
I don't even know why that change.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
That's all my brain's doing, right, I know that's my
brain too. I forget everything, and I've forgotten. I've been rejected.
And I looked at this rejection that I'm like, I
couldn't even know. I'm like, then I remembered I actually
had got knocked back, and I went in to meet
the vice dean of computer science, and for some reason
I convinced them. I can vaguely remember saying, no, I'm
really good at programming, blah blah blah, you do't regret,

(12:14):
and they tried to talk me out of it, and
somehow I got in even though I'd got this formal rejection.
I remember, I only remembered it when I saw the
piece of paper. So yeah, they didn't think it was
a good idea either.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
I guess I love it. You're just like I refused
to accept that.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, and I found the rejection letter for the Blue
Tharm business plan for their business competition. I applied for it,
you know, in second or third year, I remember that.
But Blue Thumb the app was a UNI project for
r MIT.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Actually really yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
It was maybe the third year of it or whatever.
I was working as an app developer and that was
like the first job I'd actually loved in my life.
I'd be twenty seven or something. I sort of went
to outwear they are the best app makers, said I
want to work here, and they're like, can you program that?

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Not yet?

Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yeah, well I'm two months into the UNI Like, well
then you're useless to us. I'm like, no, no, no,
what else do you need? And they had this argument,
the two founders in front of me, like we don't
need and we need developer as well. I'm here, And
eventually they're like, look, you can do it day a
week doing some marketing. Maybe do you know how to design?
I'm like, what's that? Do you know? U? Ex design?

(13:21):
Like I'm doing course next semester, Like okay, you can
maybe try that. So anyway, I've worked with these developers
and there's the first job i'd loved, and now I
was there and I had this unique assignment for RT
to do to make an app like an iOS app,
and oh blue Thumb, you know, we're just getting rolling
with the website, we'll make an app for it. And

(13:43):
I was not a very good dev. I never was
a good dev. But a friend, two friends that at
outwears Great devs helped me and they built this beautiful
app for us that was like lovely experience of our website,
and we submitted it and RT, oh great, you get
an A but Apple featured it and we immediately got
seven thousand yearss overnight.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Oh man.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
That was our first big kind of kick forward was
my UNI app that the guys at work and helped
me build got featured. That's amazing, sent things up like
the first you know, you get these step changes occasionally,
very occasionally. That was the first one.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Well, I think the first one is that you had
a first career that didn't work. That was the first step.
I always come back to that idea that you know,
and people listening will be like, oh my god, you've
been talking about this for seven years now, shut up.
But it's always relevant to me. And that's that you
don't have to see the whole staircase. You just have

(14:40):
to see the immediate next step that you're on, and
like that's all you can throw things at. They don't
all have to work out, Like they don't all have
to be the You don't have to reach the end
of the staircase that you started on, like you can
change direction as you go along. And I love that
you didn't love what you were doing until twenty seven.
And in most people's brains in the early twenties, you
think that's why too late. I think we have this

(15:01):
like perceived schedule of life of when we should find
our passion and when we should find what we're going
to do. But you hadn't even entered the industry that
you ended up in, like your whole family's music. You
have a history in music, You were doing it full time,
and you never considered that there was anything else for you.
I think anyone listening who is all consumed in something
and you don't love it, but you don't know where
else you can go. That's okay, It's so common, like

(15:25):
more common than you ever imagine. But then you have
found this thing that you love, and it sounds like
you had actually faced more rejection than I knew of
in the story quite early on. How do you Because
I think people are also they're not just scared of failure,
they're also scared of rejection when someone says no to you.
What does that feel like? Do you take it as

(15:45):
a challenge. Do you have a moment where you're like, oh, well,
it's going to fail. I'm not going to do it.
How do you deal with that kind of self doubt
dialogue that happens when you do get a know because
for some people that'll be it blue. Some would have
never got off the ground. But I love that you
were like, fuck it, I'm going to do it anyway.
Oh r M, I T you take that back. I'm
going to force my way into this course.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Look, I take notes, so personally, I like I've got
the thinner skin in the world. Like I sit back
and I'm like, oh, it's all, oh give up, No,
this is a terrible idea. And I like, I'll have
I have half a day of just moping the world's ended.

(16:25):
I'm ship this sucks. And then it's either like I
talked to Lauren or I talked to a co found
or whatever, and suddenly you're like, you're back on. Oh,
those guys don't know what they're doing, Like suddenly I
don't know, Actually you're fine. And I just kind of
think about it as like the spins are the rule

(16:47):
that will. You know, It's if you think about it,
like it's a game to keep playing. If you keep going,
if you keep spinning the rule that will, you're gonna
you're gonna hit the jackpot. You're gonna you're gonna get somewhere.
And the people who get somewhere, the people who just keeps.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Me, Oh, I love.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
That's all it is. It's my ambition is always far
outweigh my talent in anything I've ever done that.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Is extremely inaccurately humble and absolutely.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Not you know, like I said, programming, I was never
very good. Music, I was never great. I just loved it. Like, yeah,
I think my ability to keep going is probably my
strongest strength, more than any than any talent. So yeah,
like when I get to know, I take it really
personally and I have a terrible day and then.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Pretty quick turnaround. To be fair, I guess.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
And then you keep going and not. Yeah, and it's
always for me, like, you know, on my own, i'd
never get anywhere. Like, it's always having someone to wing to,
someone to bounce off, always having someone else, because if
you're going through it together, you're fine.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Like that's a great point.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
Yeah, it's solo founders I'm absolutely in awe of because
I couldn't. I just couldn't. Yeah, but having someone there
to just at least commiserate with or to agree that
these guys are idiots and don't know what they're.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Doing them.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Hype girl in that moment.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
Absolutely Yeah, And like my hype girl was my brother
and kid.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Nice. I was thinking more Lauren, but with the pomp. Well,
I love that because it's a really common theme, I think,
and it doesn't get talked about as much because the
media are always going to focus on the success story
and the most recent chapter of your life. That's always
going to be what the articles are about. But I
find that when you dig a little deeper, most really

(18:43):
successful founders have thrown a couple of ideas out at
the world that have come back and not gone very well.
Like it's never not never, but it's very Unusually the
first try that becomes the thing that blows up. And
I just don't think you hear about that enough, because
you know, why would you talk about that. But I
think people who are in their first or second try

(19:05):
that hasn't gone so well need to hear that that's
not a deterrent. That's you just experimenting and playing roulette.
And it's like, don't stop because the first one didn't work.
Some people it takes them like seven tries. Just keep
going because you'll find the thing absolutely And yeah, give
yourself a day, give yourself a couple of days if
it takes that to open. Feel like failure hurts, it does,

(19:26):
It stings, But if you bounce back, you can you
can have a blue thumb. So I love that. So
tell us once you had And I loved reading that.
It was around the idea that art is an industry
that's very intimidating. It feels sometimes a bit stuffy and
inaccessible if you don't understand the provenance of everything. And
I love that you actually came to the industry as

(19:48):
an outsider and then wanted to make it accessible. How
did you like? How where did the name come from?
Where did the initial concept that you turned into an app.
Come from and how did you meet your co founders?

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yeah, I think coming to art from outside, like my
two co founders a chartered accountant and I was like
an app designer, so far away from coming to it
as an outside I think has actually been a benefit
to us because it sort of hadn't really been done.
Like we you know, we were trying to make build

(20:21):
tech tools for artists to sell their artwork directly to collectors, right,
we wanted to ignore the middle layer of industry of art.
And Yeah, I like I hated the feeling of going
to a gallery and just getting kind of like dismissed.
You know, if you have to ask what it is
and the price, then it's too expensive for you, you know,
I hate that for you.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
There are no prices in gallery like.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
You know I And also when we're doing our first research,
like I spoke to a few industry folks and a
couple of galleries and I remember being laughed at, like
properly laughed at. Yeah, And that really put fire in
the belly, you know, someone like just laughing at you.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, he had your open you twenty four hours and then.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
No, No, that was pure, like like, Okay, now now
I'm going to try and build this out of spite.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Is a powerful emotion.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yes, so that was like, okay, screw you, I'm going
to prove that. You know, no one will ever buy
art for a thousand bucks sight unseen. That was like
they were pissing themselves at us. I'm like, okay, And
when we hit that mask and I'm like yeah, but
and yeah, we'd had bandit out a few ideas. We
were going to do a wine website. I wanted to

(21:37):
do music obviously, but SoundCloud was so good. SoundCloud was
just this perfect platform that put artists right in front
of their fans. I'm like, this is perfect. We can't
how are we going to beat this? But like SoundCloud
for art and I was like, there's an idea, love
that cloud. Yeah, Like so that was kind of That's
been the vision pretty much the whole time is let's

(21:59):
build SoundCloud for us, let's build tools for artists to
sell their artwork in front of collectors. And from the
start we sort of you know, I loved really nice ux,
really nice technology. Like, like I said, the Jobs book
was like a real changing life pivotal moment. Reading that
and I'm like, Okay, I think if we build a
better product. You know, we're coming from outside art, let's

(22:21):
just build the best technology tool. I think we will
be able to kind of really get somewhere. So we
just focus on a better product. And then we had
to learn distribution and marketing, which was like like, oh,
you actually have to think about this product person. Oh wait,
we have to pay attention to SEO. So we learned

(22:43):
that along the way. But but yeah, it was you know,
we actually we bought a website for from an art gallery,
like okay, and you know, we'd bought another website for
apps and stuff, so we bought this art galeries website, like,
let's turn this into SoundCloud for right. So that's where
that's actually where it started.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
This was still at UNI, so it was still I was.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Working it out where as well doing UNI as well,
and Fill and Ed were both lack accountants working full
time accounting jobs, and so we're like, okay, cool, we've
got this art gallery website. Let's turn it into a platform.
Let's turn into a marketplace. We'll call it Blue Thumb
started working on the app as well, and we sort
of we chipped away with our jobs and with this

(23:27):
blue thumb on the side for a couple of years.
I'd say, real, Like I said, my memory is absolutely terrible.
This was started twenty twenty a twelve, I reckon it
was maybe mid twenty thirteen. I remember that one of
the best days of my Yeah, yeah, look I know this,
but I do remember one of the best days of

(23:48):
my life was when I had to stopped being the
customer service person. Man Like, yeah, our first hire and
customer service.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Was like just bliss, which actually is really interesting because
it does come back to the fact that you do
kind of have to do everything and learn everything at
the start of most startups, not all of them, some
need like full scale teams to start off. But even
before that, I loved hearing about how you sort of

(24:18):
thought about wine and then you thought about art. And
I think I have erroneously maybe like it works for
my particular situation, but always been a big proponent of
find a gap in the market where you're the consumer
and you've had the experience, don't reverse engineer it, don't
go I want to be a business person, Let's find
an idea. Go. I stumbled upon an idea because I'm

(24:39):
the consumer but I think you're a really good example
of that. Of course you can reverse engineer it. Of
course you can say I need a business idea, where
is there a gap? Look at the market and find one.
And it doesn't have to be something that you know
anything about. You just have to be the best at
like how you present it. You have to have a
skill set that. It doesn't have to be in art.
It can be. Remember the conversation we had when I said, oh,

(24:59):
obviously you're an and you were like, no, how fascinated
I was. Do you remember?

Speaker 1 (25:03):
I was just like I got an art podcast just
so I can learn about it.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
Yeah, you were like, no, I know nothing about it.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
I don't. Yeah, I sit on that podcast. I'm like, oh,
I haven't heard of that person that's like Lauren? Is
he so much stick? Because yeah, So no, none of
us knew anything about art. Dad was a painter, though
he had a real passion for it. Isn't it countt
who painted? So he loved art. So a house was
ful of art, but he doesn't know much about it.

(25:29):
He just likes painting. But no, none of us had
a clue what I would say. Though I was building
a product that I could empathize with as a musician.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Yes, so like as the artist.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah, that kind of connection as to what would I need,
what do I need to kind of show someone to
know that there are artwork? Is kind of being you know,
this is popular, this is engaging. You know that feeling
of oh, you put something up and a lot of
people suddenly like it. You know, what do you need
to feed back to them that in a more general sense,

(26:05):
like has has been helpful?

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, that insight.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, but as far as no, like yeah, you know,
I don't think I bought a painting when we launched.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
It's like, again, I take back so much of what
I've said before about like be your own customer, which, like,
obviously it helps, it helps in so many situations. Completely agree,
But it's not the only pathway. You can literally look
at the market and go, what is a problem that
needs solving somewhere that I have the skill set for
and you can make it incredibly incredibly successful. I mean,
you guys are now I think I was reading and

(26:38):
this is an outdated article. You have like three hundred
million dollars of art for sale on the website. Oh yeah,
way more now, right, Jesus like, that's crazy, this idea
from a UNI project in an industry that none of
the three founders are in. That's extraordinary, It's great.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
No, yeah, I'm surprised, surprise myself sometimes managed to pull
this off. You still waiting for someone to.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Tell you, oh, it's all fake. So what would you
say to anyone else who is kind of trying to
you know, has that enthusiasm, does feel like they have
a good skill set, but is looking for that idea. Firstly,
how do you know the idea that's going to stick?
And secondly, as you upskilled? And I think this is

(27:23):
probably the hardest learning curve for most people who go
into business. You will already absolutely have some skills that
are helpful and they'll just be different to everyone else's.
But you'll always have skills that you have no idea about. Like,
no one goes into a business and just has everything
they need already. How did you upskill? Was it mentors?
Did you do courses? Did you? Like? You know, you
have to wear so many hats. You have to be

(27:43):
the customer service person. You have to learn about logistics, distribution,
like legal, How did you learn all that stuff?

Speaker 1 (27:49):
Yeah? So generally learning has been a combination of just
scaring the Internet and Google right, a lot of reaching
out to people who will talk to her those court
or like catch ups with entrepreneurs. I've always made a
big effort to speak to entrepreneurs who are like slightly
adjacent to what we're doing, you know, vaguely within the

(28:13):
what we're doing. Those catch ups have definitely been the
most valuable learning of the last ten thirteen years. I
have been doing this. When you go and have a
coffee or whatever with someone, anyone who will have you
who's running, anyone.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
Who says yes, because the good ones are too busy
to write blogs, right, and that most of them are
too busy to do to really tweet their insights.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
The real alpha of this is working for our company.
We've tried these eight things, and this ninth is the
one that's working for growth or the one that's working
for new customers or product. Those things they'll tell you
in person, they're not going to they they went out
on a podcast, they won't say it on a stage.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Those one to ones are like, yeah, that's where I
pretty much learned learned all the really key stuff I
would say, apart from general Yeah, Internet So those two things.
That's kind of how we've learned, I think, and and
just by doing Yeah, like, yeah, I think I've learned
is because like we've we had another startup smart, We've

(29:22):
had a million, We've had lots of We've tried lots
and lots of stuff. You know, we've tried twenty things,
I'd say, Sarah before then the way along the way,
we like, yeah, we yeah, we've had a million dead ends,
Like we just can't people talking about them because they
didn't work.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
They're the ones you need to talk about.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
I don't have I don't have any I'm not a
detailed person.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
I remember what they were.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
I genuinely don't. But you've got all these dead ends,
Like I said, it's it's you know, you're spinning the
Rulett wheel. You got to so the bias for action,
trying things quickly. Yeah, you know, you learn when you
put something out into the world. Yeah, you know, the
rabbit hits the road when someone buys something that was
someone said, you know, like the quickest you can if

(30:06):
you've got an idea, my advice or what I you know.
I think what was helpful for us was not quitting
our jobs to do it. Yeah, it was doing it.
You know, we had our job yea, And yeah it's
hard because you don't have as much time and if
I couldn't do it now with you know, two kids
and everything, but when I had more time. Yeah, you've
got this time outside of work to work on these things.

(30:29):
If you still have your other job, you don't have
the pressure on it. Yeah, you can have time to experiment. Yeah,
it is. It's a low risk. And so if you've
got an idea, I'd say just do it. Just do
whatever you're doing right now and do the idea as well.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
That Yeah, so nuts and bolts wise, did it start
as just the three of you know, other staff? And
how did you get your first sale? Like did you
have to get a critical map for anyone who's looking
at a marketplace? Did you have to get a critical
massive artists first? Did you already have them? Like what
was kind of the growth or the chronology of U

(31:05):
three staff, number of artists, number of sales? Do you
remember your first sale? When was it? How far was
the lag between like launching and then?

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Yeah, so those early days, you know they're hard marketplaces, Yeah,
double hard, right, Yeah, so I do remember, Yeah, we had,
you know, we got we got this art gallery website.
We're like, okay, we'll rebrand it, rebuild it. So that
took Actually we did it really simply so that that
that was quick. So we're probably back up within two months.
And then I remember it was probably another two months

(31:34):
before we sold a network, so we only had a
couple of artists on there. We went out, we did
some cold emailing, and then is that how.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
You scouted them the first time? Cold emails?

Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, yeah, cold email for heaps of stuff. Yeah yeah, yeah,
cold email. And then I remember, you know, we to
use oDesk a lot.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
It's up, yeah, and we still do.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
It's amazing. Yeah, it's like you can get an expert,
you know, sitting in Europe who's who's fairly affordable and
they've been doing this for twenty years and I need
three hours of their time to sort out my CEO.
It's incredible. It's like the Internet. I love it.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
It's pretty great that Internet.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
It can there's someone somewhere who can solve your problem,
you know, for like four hours of their time. So
we got an SEO person who said, you know, we
want to rank for how do you sell art? Because
we want artists to be able to find us, so
we start worked on that a little bit. I thon.
It took us two months to get our first sale.
We had a few inquiries and I ended up calling,
you know, inquiry leaving number. I'd hit the phones close

(32:32):
to calling. Yeah, yeah, look they sent us a note
about something. So I call and are in two months
in someone board and that We're like yeah, and we
it was just the three of us, so fill it
and me for at least eighty months, I reckon. And
we had our jobs for quite a while.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah. How long after that?

Speaker 1 (32:50):
Probably around eighty months. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Maybe do you all leave at the same time.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
No, I feel Phil went a bit earlier because we
had another app template business as well at the time,
was selling app ten plates. He went to sort of
work on that as getting a bit more money. We
had an email business called Sendicate.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
Did you have like starter mail or something?

Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, and then we had smarter mail as well. So,
like I said, we had lots of these things, and
then it was bloody hard. We were putting our own
money in for two years. I reckon, we have lots
of you know, I didn't have much money. We just
had a job. So we we were funding this marketplace development.
We hired one dev. Maybe we had a sort of
agency for a year. Then we hired one dev so

(33:27):
it was probably our first hire. Then it's the customer
support and it was so hard and it was like
maybe two and a half years in. It was nowhere
near scale. We hadn't raised money and we were like
at breaking point. And there's this discussion is like do
we just try and sell this?

Speaker 2 (33:43):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Do we raise money? And I'm like this, this can
be big, this could be a thing. I remember, and
there's a discussion of like okay, one of us will
go and try and sell the business, and I'll go
and try and raise money.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
And whoever comes back first, whoever.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Gets the deal first. And so I went out. I'm
like right, and I just hit up every founder of
a big e comm business I could find in Australia
on LinkedIn and cold email.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
Wow back to the cold email.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
Oh hell yeah, yeah, I love it. And so we
went cold I went to like probably twenty big e
commerce founders you know, Russel and Cogan and you know,
and we had one reply and that was from Jeremy's
same you know, with that Oh my God, and that
was it, so.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
I could one because that's the one that works.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
It was a reply and it was a no. It
was like oh yeah, and you were like, yeah, yeah,
it was nice, nice little business. But he said, oh,
we don't invest, we just buy them and you're probably
not at scale anyway. Oh, no worries, you know, We're
keep in touch. And then he pinned me a few
few months later like how's it going, And we'd grown
a bit and I'm like, oh, you know, we we

(34:52):
were doing the first time I spoke to him, we
were doing maybe six thousand bucks a month and we
were like twenty or something. So it's starting to grow
because the Age had written about us. So we tripped
from that. It's like, oh, okay, all right, and then
we had a call and then yeah, and then Adam
and Jeremy were interested and they came on. And meanwhile, like,

(35:14):
no one was interested in buying this. Here was a
loss making market, and they came on and yeah, so
they came on as our first kind of angel investors.
That was three years in i'd say twenty fifteen, and
that was amazing because suddenly we had money to scale
and it wasn't our money and we could like actually
do stuff, yeah, be full time. But again that was

(35:36):
like I was working this job at out where, and
I loved that job. There was the only job I've
ever had. I loved.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
I'm like, yeah, I don't want to leave. I'm good
at this.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
I'm finally good at something I like. And I was
just there's another thing, is like, is this a huge mistake?
You know? Like, but yeah, we did, I did leave,
we did go full time and it's gone. Yeah, it's gone.
Wilson's Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
I mean I can't believe that even three years in
and after having left your jobs, you still had moments
of like do we just get rid of this?

Speaker 1 (36:10):
Like is this yeah? Yeah? Ament it was like yeah,
you're still like might not be like tech startup takes
so much money and yeah, it's just so hard.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
You only hear about them really, like they come into
your consciousness when it's like Unicorn sold for blah blah blah,
and it's like you forget, even three years into a business,
you still didn't know it was going to be successful.
Like that's extraordinary and that you've got to know first
from here. I love that the whole theme of this
episode is no is not actually a no. Just keep

(36:42):
just keep trying, just be impressible.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
We got, you know, like ten silences in one no.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Focus on the no's better than zero zero crickets. Yeah,
but I think that's that is also reassuring that, yeah,
it doesn't again even business is that now you look
at I mean, you made like a sixty thousand dollars
sale on the website I was reading about from the
person who didn't believe you could make a one thousand
dollars sale, like that's absolutely outrageous, But that in that

(37:11):
same business you have literally considered closing before and not
just like six months in, but like three years in
before pivotal things happen. And I think it is sometimes
just keeping the faith between the pivotal things that happen
that do keep you alive until you know, you get
your momentum. So you mentioned the age, how did you?
Because I think the buzz and like, it's all well

(37:32):
and good to have an amazing idea, but it's actually
communicating that to people that gets it over the line.
How did you launch? Like how did you get people
to firstly, because you didn't have an equivalent to say
where the better version of blah. You kind of the
first people who have done this. I feel like educating.
Like when we started Matchup, people didn't know what that was.
So it's not just like why are we good, It's like,

(37:52):
what is the thing that we're selling. There's a lot
of education around that. Did you do word of mouth?
Was it trying to get placements in newspapers because it's
e comm Was it mainly seo? Like how were you
kind of getting the word out to make, you know,
it into what it has become?

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (38:08):
So you just cold call everyone and any random number.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
A lot of cold emailing of journalists. That first Age
article was yeah, tweeted the journalist Max Mason at the
Age because he'd written about art. I'm like, oh, you
should check out us. So that was a tweet and
a d M and then a follow up cold email.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
So yeah, it was a lot of cold I'd love
that you're such an ambassador for a cold email. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah. Well then I started an email company, smart Males,
so yeah I did.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Like, yeah, well paid back in so many ways, really
good ROI.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yeah, like pr is did work in the early.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
Days for us, Like you had an agency outsourced no
we did it, like yeah, like yeah, just you're amazing.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
I'm not literally, I just like sending lots of emails.
So yeah, like we found we thought we were too small,
we couldn't pay people in the early days. Look, let's
just send some founder emails or whatever. But it's sort
of the artist stories are interesting, Like most of our
artists are not in kind of like a high end gallery,
but you know, the ones that get momentum find massive

(39:16):
success on us and like we'll quit a job they
don't like and become full time artists. And you know,
we started tracking these like incredible stories of these artists
who you know, had managed to go full time in
their career and be super successful and like.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Because of you guys.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Yeah, like because because they can connect to the collectors
directly through us, because we had to be collectibates. So
those stories, you know, really moved me, you know, because
I'm like I always wanted that for my music and
never got there, and I like love I love seeing
that for artists, like I really do, and like they
you know, they always sort of touched me, like moves
me a lot, and so I'm like, well, why don't
we tell pr you know why don't we pr these?

(39:54):
So that was good for us, like that was a
good storytelling thing. And then it was like good old SEO,
like we're a marketplace and feel my co founder he's
good at sort of the technical marketing stuff, and he
used to like lurk on some.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
Funny old buch.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
This horrible black hat marketing blog. What was it called
Warrior Forum or something just yeah, just these guys forums.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, no, and cold emails lurking for um just tweet random.
I love it.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, So we just we never
thought we'd be able to raise money, and he just thought,
we're going to have to work this ship out on
our own. So he worked out se O and and
at work we'd get external se O people to kind
of do our on page s O for us, so
show us we're a keyword gaps all that stuff. You know,
you just find someone like what should we be optimizing
for what blog post? Yeah? Yeah, And so that long

(40:55):
term that that's worked really well. So now you know,
we have a really strong SEO kind of channel and
as a markplace, it's really important. So now we're in
a good position for that. They were the two channels, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
I love the I really do love the cold call
recurring so often in this because I think again that
whole siloing or self selecting yourself out of things because
you don't think you meet the criteria for something. I
think some people think, oh, but they're connected, they know
Adam or they know whatever, and he knows this, and
it's like you didn't know him at the start. You
made that relationship because you just yeah, because you literally

(41:30):
send a DM and I think, like, yeah, sure you've
got nine no's, but all you need is one warmer note.
But like, it's true the amount of times that I
have made networks that now people will assume that I
got something because I was friends with this person, that
the relationship did begin because of a cold email. And
you just have to kind of a not be scared

(41:51):
that you'll get a know or dead silence. What's the
worst that can happen? You feel silif for five minutes
and b like there's always a chance that they'll say Yes,
people are interested, they're really interested in what other people
are doing, and if they do hear a good idea,
people love to be involved in that kind of stuff.
And you've got a fifty to fifty chance that it'll
be yes, So why would you not just take the risk?
The email takes two seconds, and the amount of tized

(42:11):
people have surprised me and come back and said yes
when they didn't know, like now we're friends. But at
the time, I'm like, sometimes you just have to give
people a chance to take a chance on you.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Absolutely, And if you're kind of specific with ask, what
I've found is people you know, important, powerful whatever, like
doer type, CEOs, whatever. These these people often do want
to help. You know, they've been in your position trying
to get something off the ground, And if you're kind
of specific, you'll be surprised how often these people want

(42:41):
to help.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yeah, I agree. I think it's a big part of
the entrepreneurial sort of attitude is you pay it forward
to people who are, you know, earlier on in their journey,
because that is how everyone learns. It's through like incidental mentors,
and so there's a willingness there. It's just you do
have to ask, and you're right, you do have to
ask in the right way. So I also think sometimes
saying will you be my mentor is like, well, no,

(43:03):
no one has time to be your blanket. Mentor even
though I really wanted that, I wanted the simplicity of that.
That kind of email doesn't normally work. But if you say,
I know that you're a specific expert in this and
this is what I'm struggling with in my business, could
you give me a couple of pointers on that thing,
They're going to go, Yeah, that's exactly you know, my expertise.
So that's a really good point. Is like, formulate the

(43:23):
cold email in a clever way.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Specific you general that night.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah, going to make it easy for that. So now,
I mean, you guys have gone from not like you said,
not knowing what that you'd ever get investors or that
how well we're gone. That comes back to the staircase
thing that you weren't jumping through hurdles that were ten
years down the track yet you were just focusing on
the next thing. And that's a beautiful way way to operate.
But you have just launched in the US. Tell us

(43:51):
about where you're at now, Like, what's what's blue thumb
doing now? What are your big goals and projects and
hopes and dreams.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Yeah, well, yeah, so we've launched blue thumb art dot
Com in the US, So you know, we're a dot com.
Dot are you here? And you know.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
We's a dot com.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Thirteen years later, we are finally, we're finally into the USA.
You know. It's the world's biggest art market. Yeah, but
it's it's the most competitive as well. But the funny
thing is we a lot of our bigger artists already
sell quite a lot there, just not through us. You know,
we have like a strong loyalty with our artists. You know,
we sort of we measure our net promoter score that's high,

(44:30):
you know. But you know, we haven't had this good
USA experience. We haven't been selling much there, you know,
because it's just this dot AU in Australian dollars. So yeah,
we've launched the dot com. We've got one person in
the USA as well, you actually have stuff. Yeah, We've
got someone there, which is cool and hopefully I'll get
there in a month or two to kind of see

(44:50):
the lay of the land and say hello, Yeah, so
that's all happening and now it's just a matter of
It's funny. It's like, because we've been at this for
quite a long time, you actually do forget the initial
stuff that you did, Like all the small bits, you know,
the beginning, the little things doing every day you're completely forgotten.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
So you especially.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
I'm a goldfish. So yeah, we're back to that, Like
we need to assume no one knows us or cares.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
You know.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
What we do is we have some great art already,
but we don't have the buyers. So it's yeah, it's
it's close to zero to one again, you know, it's
er point one to one now.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
So yeah, chairman though, to see if you can do
it all again.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
It's exciting. Yeah, And we've always, like I said, we
always had a chip on our shoulder about a technology
company in h you know, people aren't doing this the
right way. They need to focus on better tech for
artists and ignore them.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Like what's the masses?

Speaker 1 (45:49):
Yeah, like what the norm is in the art industry.
The art industry sucks. The industry is opaque. It makes
you yeah, yeah, it's like it's not there to benefit artist.
It's not even there to benefit most collectors. You know,
it's there to make them feel like shit, So no.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
More.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yeah, I don't know, squeeze money out of the top
of it sucks. So like, you know, we sort of
driven by a bit of a chip on the shoulder
there to kind of make it into something. Yeah, so yeah,
it's exciting.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Okay, so big takeaways chip on your shoulder, cold calling,
winging it, getting lots of nose. No, I really, I
really love that it hasn't all been you know what
so many big tech founders. It's not the same narrative.
It's not like I was a you know, playing with

(46:41):
computers since I was zero, and I always wanted to
be in tech, but I also always knew art. It
was the combination of my passion of my profession. I
love that it's like none of it is conventional and
that's such a great story. How do you now? And
especially now that you have two beautiful children? A big
part of seizing your yea is like, once you find
a meaningful job, and particularly one that is doing such

(47:02):
beautiful things for other artists like you get I'm sure
so much gratification from watching their stories. How do you
switch off? Do you find joy in work? Firstly, would
you say you love your job now? And what do
you do outside of work that's kind of allows you
to switch off? Especially now that you're back in that
hustle mode, Like, how do you switch off? And just
what are the things that help make you forget what
time it is or that forget you to do list?

Speaker 1 (47:24):
So yeah, I do love my job. Like I feel
very lucky that I wake up and it feels like
you know, the day after high school finished, when you
can do anything.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
You know, that feeling like shit's.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
Finished and I can do whatever the hell I want?

Speaker 2 (47:41):
Sits so much.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, I can now do whatever like it's done.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
Awesome.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
I still feel like that. I still feel like I'm
which on school.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
Do you know what? That's actually such a good description.
I feel like that every day too. I'm like I
can do whatever I want and it's my work. Yeah,
that's amazing.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
Yeah, like this mostly how I feel. Obviously I feel
terrible a lot when there's stress and all this stuff,
but like I yeah, I just have.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
That feeling of you for twenty four hours and then.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
I just feel lucky that I can we can have
an idea and go and do it like it's amazing. Like,
so yeah, I do love that. How do I switch off?
I used to drink too much nice, so that was
that was a good fun switch Yeah, it was. It
was fun until until you have little kids and then
it's no longer fun having a hangover.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
No, I haven't even risked it because I'm like, there's
it's already hard, dead sober.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
So No. I used to love, like, you know, going
out to the pub with friends and stuff, so that
I don't do that. I read. I like reading.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
We still play bass in trombone?

Speaker 1 (48:49):
No, no, you don't at all. They're under the bed,
the instruments. I'm fairly like one track. Like I can
kind of only do one thing at a time with
my life, and at the moment that's building companies. Yeah,
I just can't.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
It's interesting because you can build multiple companies, I feel,
like different businesses, but you can't. Yeah that's really coo.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Yeah so yeah, that's sort of unfortunately. Like and you know,
every year I write a list of stuff I want
to work on or build or whatever. Like that's actually
been a big thing for me. That did change my
life as well. Back in twenty twelve, I wrote my
first you know, list of what I want to get
out of the year, and one of them was like,
you know, start a company. And then I've looked back.

(49:32):
I keep that list in my Apple Notes. I've looked
back and I found I've actually done a lot of
the stuff I wrote down one days. Normally it would
take two or three years. Normally it'll be like from
two years ago, I've finally achieved it. But just writing
it down and having it there, not even looking at
much is actually helped to me.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
I do that every year as well. I think resolutions
get a really bad rap, but I find they are
a really nice way to track your even if they
change that way through the year. Just track your thinking
and your goals and whether you get there or.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah and so. But on that for like
five years, I had, oh yeah, I start another band,
and that's I've never been able to do that one. Yeah,
I've been able to do a lot of the others.
So no, I'm I like playing with my hanging out
with my family, Like I've got two kids, and yeah,
it's great. Is that a lot to life?

Speaker 2 (50:19):
Yeah, I feel like you don't really get what I
personally have found. And I don't know people with two
or like more than one. I'm like, you're actually a
superhuman that they are kind of my joy, Like Teddy
is my joy. That is playing, that is my play.
I don't kind of need to do the same types
of play activities at the moment because I do them
playing with him. Is that whereas before I need to

(50:40):
read or like going, you know, do an activity to
kind of help me switch off. But they are such
good time wasters. Yeah, it just that makes me forget
what time it is because you're so consumed in being
with them, which is so cute. How would you say,
just as a last question, I feel like a lot
of people's journey is kind of consumed the idea of

(51:00):
being successful, and like we've already mentioned success and failure
and use those words about them around and I feel
like it's it becomes a lot of the metric that
people use to measure their life and happiness and fulfillment
and do you like your job and do you enjoy
what you do? Don't really come into it until later
in the piece, which is a real shame because I
think you can get on this hamster wheel and not

(51:20):
jump off often until you know, sometimes it's quite late
in your life. Do you feel successful? What do you
consider is success? And has that changed?

Speaker 1 (51:30):
So like, yeah, objectively I should feel successful. And you
know there's that quote of like remember when you're desperately
wanted all the things you have now, so like I
can try and reason that, yeah, you're doing well, but nah,
really yeah, I just you.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Don't feel it. Nah you look at the stage, you
have some crazy metrics.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yeah, like no, I well yeah, I sort of.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
It's already making you so uncomfortable. Is that a humility thing?

Speaker 1 (52:07):
I think? Like I was talking to someone the other
day and it was like, should be bigger than it is. Yeah,
we're not. We're not. This is not where it should be.
And no, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
Just is that the fire that keeps you alive? Though?
Some people need that that drive for the next thing
that comes out of dissatisfaction with the present.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
If you're a therapist, that would probably say, you need
to know, you need to realize you're enough.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
Wow, you are extraordinarily objectively successful.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm super lucky. Like I do
feel very lucky that I've got you know, what we've built,
and also like a really great team. I like going
to work with these people like that. You know, we've
got people who are a lot better than all their
jobs than I am for this stuff, which is great. No,
it's really actually it's awesome. So I feel super lucky.

(53:12):
That we've got this and that we you know, have
been able to kind of build this also for our artists.
But nah, I just know I feel like, yeah, we're
not We're not where we should be, and yeah, there's
a lot to do.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Yeah wow, Well in that case, in five ye is time,
we'll do another episode. We'll check in and see if
you are your metrics for that are they financial? Are
they numbers of like is there a particular number of
users or a number of sales? Like do you have
an idea what that looks like where you would be
like tick? Or will it just be this moving goalpost?

Speaker 1 (53:45):
Don't? Yeah, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
I love that. Nice. Well, congratulations on everything. Do you
know what's next? Or just the US? Just focus on
Yeah that not just the US, I mean the US.
That's an enormous market.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Actually two things, so I should mention we've got I
mentioned an art podcast, So we've we've launched our podcast,
which I'm loving because I'm learning about art and intoing
interesting art collectors, which you've been on Sarah and not an.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Art collector, but I know I thoroughly enjoyed link the
episode that we did.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
That was a great chat. But the something that we
launched this week actually was print on demand, so all
of our artists now can sell prints of that's all
of their originals through us. Yeah, so that's kind of
that's a super cool thing. And like we built this
kind of interesting AI upscaler to kind of make them
super high res. So you've been working with the printing

(54:38):
company for a year to get really really high resolution prints. Yeah,
on like a really thick, nice stock. So yeah, that's cool.
That went live this week, So that's a.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
Bit gradual thing. Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
Yeah, and you know it's like we look at our
analytics a lot and Prince is top ten search term
on us in your own yeah yeah yeah yeah, so
so that that it's also cool as well as obviously
the USA, which is like the big build. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
Oh congratulations. And for everyone who's listening, I mean, if
you haven't, most people actually that I've mentioned this podcast
too already have bought from Blue Thumb, which is so cool.
I'm like, oh, this is amazing, Like you know the
guy from Blue sum They're like, yes, I buy from there.
So most of you probably already you don't need the link,
but I will put the link to Blue Thumb in
the show notes just in case as well as the podcast. George,

(55:26):
thank you so much for joining USAT, such a cool
human doing amazing things. And if you don't already know
Blue Thumb or haven't already purchased, although I think many
of you probably have or have at least heard of them,
it is an incredible place to source artwork and find
new artist and was particularly amazing for us when we
were first renovating and decorating the house. I will include
links in the show notes as well as to George's pages,

(55:48):
along with my episode on his podcast too, which was
an absolute delight to record. It was also so lovely
to bond over having kids at a similar age and
hearing about the fatherhood of his life as well. He's
just such a lovely person, incredibly almost painfully humble about
how successful he's been, but I guess that's all the
more endearing. I hope you guys enjoyed. If you did,

(56:10):
please as always share the episode, spreading the yighborhood, growing
it as far and wide as possible, and leave us
a review and hit the subscribe button if you haven't already.
One of my resolutions this year is to remind you
guys to do that more. If you have a second,
I would be so grateful, But otherwise I hope you
are having an amazing week and seizing your yay