September 17, 2025 • 49 mins
There would be very few Australians who haven’t encountered The Daily Aus at one point or another, consuming the latest headlines from around the world in unmistakably bright colours and a no-nonsense vernacular. Since 2017, TDA has been disrupting the media landscape by repackaging leading news stories in a digestible, engaging way for younger, traditionally news-avoidant audiences.
What you may not know, however, is that a) it all began between two complete strangers, b) was all designed and executed at that initial blind coffee catch up and c) with both of them working outside of journalism and the media at the time. After years of following both her work and her pathYAY behind the scenes, I’m thrilled to have one of those co-founders, Zara Seidler, with us today.
You all know I love a pivot-filled pathYAY and Zara's is one for the ages going from early leanings towards education to climbing the ladder in government and politics before somewhat stumbling into this dream career. You’ll hear how she built a side hustle with a stranger into a media monster with a few fun side stories about managing risk, underestimation and failed rebrands and ALL still before the age of 30 years old.
We also touch on the loss of her father to suicide when she was just 16 years old, a defining moment both for Zara and her family including her brother Zac - a clinical psychologist, researcher and Global Director of Men's Health at Movember - who you have also heard on the show. She is extraordinary in many ways, eloquent beyond her years and a joy to chat with - I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Like prove them wrong. They thought that we were a
blip and that we couldn't be taken seriously as a
business in this industry, and rather than tell them we can,
we showed them that we can.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
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
(00:34):
will bear all the facets of seizing your yea. I'm
Sarah Davidson or a spoonful of Sarah. A lawyer turned
fu entrepreneurs wapped the suits and heels to co found
matcha Maiden and matcha Milk Bar.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Sez the Ya is.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
A series of conversations on finding a life you love
and exploring the self doubt, challenge, joy and fulfillment along
the way. There would be very few Australians who haven't
encountered The Daily Oz at one point or another, consuming
the latest headlines from around the world in unmistakable bright
signature colors and a no nonsense vernacular. Since twenty seventeen,
(01:11):
TDA has been disrupting the media landscape by repackaging leading
news stories in a digestible, engaging way for younger, traditionally
news avoidant audiences. What you may not know, however, is
that A. It all began between two complete strangers. B
was all designed and executed at that initial blind coffee
catchup between said strangers and C, with both of them
(01:35):
working outside of journalism and outside of the media at
the time. After years of following both her work and
her path ya behind the scenes that led her to TDA,
I'm so thrilled to have had one of the incredible
co founders, Sara Sidler on the show today. You all
know I love a pivot filled pathia, especially one with
a defining happy accident, and Sara is the queen of both,
(01:57):
going from early leanings towards education to climbing the ladder
in government of politics before accidentally falling into this dream career.
You'll hear how she built a side hustle with a
stranger into a media monster, with a few fun side
stories about managing risk, the power of underestimation, and a
failed rebrand, and all of this still before the age
(02:17):
of thirty years old. We also touch on the loss
of Zara's father to suicide when she was just sixteen
years old, an unfathomable and defining moment both for her
and her family, including one of her brothers, Zach, a
clinical psychologist, researcher, and global director of Men's Health at November,
who many of you may remember, we were also lucky
(02:38):
enough to welcome to the show, So please do take
care while listening to those segments, and do not hesitate
to seek help if you need further support. Zara is
extraordinary in so many ways, eloquent beyond her years, and.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
A joy to chat with.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I hope you guys enjoyed this one as much as
I did.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Zara Sidler, Welcome to Seza. Thank you for having me
so excited. Gosh, I'm so excited coming.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I feel like you are one of those internet besties
that I have where it's like, likewise, I'm just catching
up with an old friend.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
And then I was like, wait, no, but we haven't met.
But it is an old friend. It is an old friend.
And look, you've interviewed my brother on this podcast, so
it's a family affair, we're basically related. Basically where it
can end. Now all's done, and.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I mean before we get into your actual story, which
is incredible, especially given guys, I just have to preface
everything that comes next with the fact that Zara is
not even thirty years old. Like that blows feel one
hundred if that guy's my joint, You've done one hundred
years worth of things in your lifetime. But before we
(03:48):
get into it, tell us what it takes. I mean,
you are like at the front line of news and
delivering that to hundreds and thousands of Australians. I was
looking at the last twenty four hours. You've done ten
Instagram post some different stories just in that time. Three
podcast episodes have also come out in that time.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
You just mentioned you.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Do two podcast episodes every single day. I mean, it's
what ten o'clock, not even what have you done this
morning to get here and to have kind of ticked
the new cycle delivery?
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Okay, good question. No two days are the same, which
is the joy and the peril of a news cycle.
But every day for me starts the same, and anyone
who has like good mental health and good well being
is going to hate what I'm going to say that,
which is that I start my day every morning by
reading the news. Like I roll over and eleven seconds
(04:37):
after my brain is on, I'm reading the news. And
I know how bad that is for me, but I
just can't help it. I made my hobby my job,
and so I would have probably done that anyway, and
now it's my job to do it. So listen exactly
kind of thrilled. So I have like a bunch of
newsletters and news sites and just news consumption that I
(04:59):
do every single morning, you know, around six am. Start
with that. Then we get a newsletter out by seven am.
So working deliverables by seven, seven days a week, lunch. Yeah,
we always talk about like why didn't we call it
the monthly or the you know yearly os? What were
we thinking? Well, we're like at least quarter every single day.
(05:20):
So by now I've done a nine am pitch meeting
where all of the team have pitched what they want
to write for the day. We've got a bunch of journos,
all young, all amazing, and everyone started with their day.
And now is where there's a bit of calm before
we get into the swing of things and start editing
and getting everything out the door. So this is sweet spot, right.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Well, I felt very very lucky to have you, given
how much happens in the morning for you, and it
is such a unique place to be where you do
have to, like I often say to people, you know,
you can wait till tomorrow, like put your mental health first.
But there are certain industries where you can't, Like the
morning is your prime, like the currency of things is
your currency.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So yeah, it is. But I do always need to
remind myself that there are a bunch of news sites
that people will consume and we don't actually have to
be the first. And you know, there is certainly a timeliness,
but we're not saving lives and we do need to
remind ourselves of that sometimes. So yeah, we can take
our time to make sure it's right. But there is
(06:19):
this relentlessness that every single day you wake up and
you do the news and it doesn't stop trying to
ask you to stop for a minute. It's like one day, well,
we'll come back to that.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Because I really do want to tap into how you
have decided your place in the market, because I think
that's really difficult. We're all facing this rat race of
like relentless speed and pace.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
But the news is just something different.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
So the fact that you have been able to get
that perspective, I mean, what you guys do so well
is you don't just deliver, and you repackage it in
a way that is digestible to a population of people
who don't necessarily love the news and who don't consume
it the same way. And that's harder. I actually think
being concise.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Is way harder. So we'll get to that.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
But what I love to do in these episodes is
start by going all the way back to the very beginning,
and for you that was like yesterday because you're a
one minute old. But at least going back to the
chapters that came before where you are now. Yeah, because
there are a lot of listeners who haven't found their passion,
let alone turned it into a profession at that, who
(07:21):
don't know what their direction is, who want to hear
that it's possible to discover something, you know, to fall
into something by accident. So let's go back to childhood. Okay,
three brothers, right back to the beginning. An incredible, talented,
well known family for many different reasons, daughter of your
late father, who was a doctor and we'll come back
(07:41):
to him. But he was also the nephew of a
famed architect, so already got some very strong heritage there.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, except everyone's like, so are you really creative? Like
are you an architect? And I'm like, you have never
met a less creative person in your whole life. Ask
me to draw. No, no, no, no no. I got
the mina brow and that's it is the strong eye.
That's about it.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
I don't see it.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
So you're maintaining that really well. So that's a skill set.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Then, also very strong matriarch at the same time, So
even though three brothers for you, strong women in your
family has been a big influence. And your grandmother who
who fled Austria, so you've got so many family roots
going on. How did that create expectations or influences.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
For you to choose who you wanted to be? Great question.
I think for me it all created a sense of momentum.
There was always momentum in my household. We were always
just encouraged to keep moving. And you just mentioned my
dad in that sense. He based his entire career around
(08:45):
helping others and he was a GP but he specialized
in addiction medicine, so he was helping the most vulnerable
in the community to deal with their addictions. And so
social justice and the sense of momentum of always moving forward,
those were kind of the two key things that I
grew up with, and it's really interesting to see how
it's manifested in each of us differently. You spoke to
(09:07):
my brother Zach, and his whole life's work now is
to help men have better health outcomes for themselves and
to feel a sense of masculinity that is healthy, and
so that's how it's manifested for him, and for me
it's I want to help people feel empowered to engage
with the world around them. Of Course, when I was
a kid, I had no idea what I was going
to do. I just wanted to, you know, have conversations,
(09:31):
meet people. I was always loud, always breggarious. Every school
report said, please shut up, you're speaking too much. Nice.
It was the best childhood and we had so much
curiosity and room for movement, and it was a really
special environment to grow up in.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Even reading the small snippets that are out there about
the family background you have in that time, it's interesting
you said momentum, because I was like you just none
of you, the four kids in your generation, were ever
going to do nothing like you were always going to
and you all have had this insatiable sense of curiosity
and learning which has manifested in different ways. But I
think it's really interesting. But I read that you initially
(10:10):
thought that that would come out in education, that you
wanted to be a teacher. So how long did that last?
And then when did you sort of work out that
actually it was more politics and media and which has
turned out to be the interesting where you live.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
I was obsessed with my teachers at school, like I
was such a teacher's pet. I always felt like teachers
took so much time and care to walk me through
things and to explain things, and it was just so
fundamental to my love of learning. What's more than that, though,
I think I loved explaining things to people very early
on interest and so for me, I was like, well,
(10:48):
if I like explaining things, education is a way that
you get to share that with other people. And so
I was like, okay, I'll do education. And then I
don't know how long it lasted until my brother actually
talked me out of it, which really he said to me,
why don't you start with something more broad, something more general,
and then if you do want to go into teaching,
(11:09):
you can do that after, like as a master's. And
you know, I chose to do just a glorified arts degree.
It's international and Global studies. It's just like four words
that mean the same thing. It does sound very fancy,
though it does, but it's just an arts degree, not
just it is an arts degree. And he was like,
why don't you do that and then just zero in
later so that you like leave your options open. Basically,
(11:32):
it was really sound advice at the time. They tell
me how to do shout out to Zach, thank you
for that. And I followed it, and thank god I did,
because I did this really broad degree where I kind
of tried everything and I realized that I loved politics
and I loved learning about it. I went on exchange
to Washington, d C. The weekend that Donald Trump was
(11:55):
inaugurated for the first time. I went, stuff, I, well,
it's it's one, you know, nation world defining moment. It'll
never happen again. I have to go again. I thought
I was, I thought I was something special there, but
I'm really glad that I did what I did, because
(12:18):
it opened so many doors of curiosity for me that
perhaps I might not have had if I'd gone straight
into what I thought would be my profession.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, that's so interesting, and I found so many parallels reading.
Even though we did very different things and had very
different initial pathways, it sounded like you had the same
sense as I did of I don't know what I
want to do, but I'm just going to climb whatever
I'm doing at the time with as much gusto as
I can to set myself up best for whatever.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
That next thing is.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And I actually never really found out what that was
until I accidentally fell into something else.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Which is the same as it happened to you.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
But is that what you were thinking at the time,
Like what was driving those steps Washington, then coming back
then sky News and then moving into government, Like what
were you thinking at that time? Was it I want
to be here or did you still not know how
the pieces would fit together?
Speaker 1 (13:08):
I had no idea. I just wanted to get as
much experience as I could, and so I went into
a whole bunch of really diverse jobs. I, as you said,
worked in media. I like was connecting the microphones for
famous politicians at three in the morning when they didn't
want to be there. I didn't want to be there,
But that opened so many doors for me because I
(13:29):
later worked for a politician who I met while connecting
her microphone at that time. No, she was just there
for an interview and I was like, I will speak
at you now. For the next ten minutes. Rehearsing childhood,
I did a bunch of things. I had no idea
how it would all add up. Honestly, I still don't
know if it did add up, as much as just
giving the experience to learn and see the world differently. Yeah,
(13:51):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I think it's a nice reminder. A lot of people
do have a plan, but a lot of us are
just doing thing to thing, and then one day you
stumble on the thing like this is my thing. Yeah,
but it's okay to be putting your all into the
bits that go beforehand, and you never actually know which relationships,
or which moments, or which skill sets are going to
be the ones that are valuable.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
That's fine, that's just it's only when you look back
that you can understand that everything forms a picture. But
at the beginning It's a bit like Picasso, like, yeah,
what am I looking at it? It becomes clear slowly.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
I've always described as like this jigsaw puzzle that starts
like this absolute clusterfuck.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Of a mess and then like you still a bit
of a clam but just a still waiting for it
to get pretty.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And so again, it's funny you were happy climbing the
ladder that you were on, And I think that's another
thing I loved about your stories.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
You weren't unhappy in your job. You weren't looking for
a way that was I was like, I am in
this industry that I don't see young women in and
I want to continue climbing. I'm like super stoked to
be here, and I would have stayed in it.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
So in that light, how did it come about? Like
what was the genesis of this idea that now has
become what we all know you for?
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, the genesis is a LinkedIn message? Huge huge? So Sam,
who's my now co founder, posted on LinkedIn that he
wanted to start something called the Daily Os. I could
find it somewhere, but it said something like, who wants
to help me build Australia's next great media thing? And
I was like me, okay, like ten friends, send it
(15:28):
to me. Sam and I had never met, but we
had a lot of mutual friends. We were like overlapping
social circles. We met for a coffee in Bundai and
I was like, all right, what are we talking about here?
And he said, I think that we should start something
for young people, and I was like, I'm a young person.
(15:49):
I mean that sounds great cool, And we had this
like four hour coffee where we came up with the
idea for it, and it was just based on the
fact that both of us and we often talk about this,
both of us were the people who were explain the
news to our friends. Our friends would come to us,
they'd say, I'm going on a date. Can you tell
me what's happening in X y Z, And so we're like, cool,
let's just make an Instagram page that does that and
(16:10):
reach our friends. And it was only ever intended to
reach our friends, like it was never intended to be. Actually,
I think Sam intended for it to be because he's
big thinker, big dreamer, big plans for the world, and
the little old of me was like, well, this sounds
like a fun pet project. And so it was born
that day and now it is what it is. Yeah,
(16:31):
see even that.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I mean, I don't want to diminish how powerful it's
become by calling it a happy accident, but I do
want to later the point to people listening that you
don't have to set out planning this for years and
years and years. You didn't even know that this was coming.
And I love that it came out of news prepping
people for dates. The weirdest ideas can hit you at
the weirdest of times. I feel like all the news
(16:52):
media that covers your story also talk about you and
Sam being besties maybe now, yes, but the fact that
you didn't know each other is even.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
And it was like instant best friend soulmate vibes, Like
we met each other and were like, oh, like, you
get where my brain's at. And I genuinely think we've
spoken every single day of our lives since that day.
So now it was like seven years ago. Now we
were the ring bearers at each other's weddings like weeks. Yeah,
it's a very special friendship. And for anyone who's thinking
(17:21):
of starting something, the one piece of advice I would
give is try and find someone to do it with
who you want to spend every day with because it
like you go through the trenches, but having him and
being able to grow this little thing into our work
and our livelihoods, it's so special doing it with your
best mate. It couldn't be better.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
And I love that you're breaking that mold of I
think we do have this idea of the ingredients that
make a great business or the ingredients that make a
big life pivot story, and it's always well, we'd always
been friends for twenty years before, and we'd always talked
about this stuff. And it's so cool that you guys,
we're not speaking about it and that that.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Can work so well.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
And I also often say that the businesses that don't
start intending to become massive often do better because you're
a naivity about what it does involve. B Because you
don't bring that pressure to it. You actually do it
the way you want to.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
I think it's very authentic when you're just building something
for you, rather than like having that perfect market fit,
product fit all that. I mean, nice for me to
say now, but back then I didn't know what anything was. Yeah,
let's just let's do this for our mates and hopefully
people will like it. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
The other story that often comes out is we started
and then the next week it blew up, and then
it always you know, hungry doory from there. Whereas for
you guys, I was reading that like three to four
years later, you were still punching out these updates, mainly
to your mum's.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Which is beautiful and delightful. Yeah, but again we get
these stories of overnight success. It's my favorite overnight success story. Yeah,
it was a long night's sleep.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Things don't happen overnight, and it does take sometimes the
right circumstances are the right timing, and if you'd given
up a day earlier then COVID, for example, you might
never have known what you could turn into. And I
think I think people forget that the best things take
a really long time and a lot of patience and yeah,
so long, but talk to us about that time, Like
(19:27):
you didn't have the success in inverta commas then that you.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Do success there was I was working in a particularly stressful,
high pressure job at the time. Sam was a lawyer
at one of the top firms in the country. We
were doing TDA before work, after work at you know,
eleven PM, and as you said, no one was watching,
(19:51):
no one was looking. I think we stayed stagnant on
like one thousand followers for three full years and no
movement at all. But we just genuinely loved it, and
we did it because we figured that the news should
be about building habit and that you know, looking back,
that that habit building and that consistency was key to
(20:14):
why it did grow and why there was that virality.
I think I probably would have given up like seven
years earlier, Yeah, exactly like first day. But we kept
each other accountable, and you know, we would text the
news to each other every single morning, and that meant
that when we did blow up unexpectedly, we knew exactly
(20:38):
what to do. We had done it so many times
that nothing actually changed because we had laid all the
foundations of how we were going to do this and
the tone and how we were going to approach it,
and it just meant when the time came, we were ready. Yeah.
That's so powerful.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
And I also love that you mentioned you kept going
just because you loved it. And I think a lot
of the time, our underlying driver is it needs to
be successful, and the metrics we set for what defines
that success are numbers, popularity, revenue figures. But sometimes I say,
(21:12):
particularly in business, when people are scaling, I'm often like, yes,
I get it from the outside, growing bigger necessarily means better.
But for you, I actually loved running a medium sized business.
Like the bigger it got, the less I was engaged
with the customer. There were so many ways I was happier,
yeah when it was smaller, and if I could have
chosen to maintain that.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
So interesting part of me is like that was the
bit that yeah, there's a sweet spot. Yeah yeah, But
I think for us, I actually just made a video
about this. I had a full time job, I had
a salary, I had stability that allowed me to grow
really slowly and sustainably, and you could afford to do that.
(21:52):
I could afford to do that. Had I taken a
huge risk and quit my job to go full time
on TDA, like, it would have been a really different story.
And so I you know, people always ask when I
knew the right time to quit my full time job was,
and my answer is always when I had the financial
security to do so. And I think that that's a
big thing of like, if you are chasing that very
quick growth versus the you know, long term sustainable growth,
(22:15):
Like there's this give and take and it is less
sustainable for you as an individual, I believe so, Yeah,
it was. It was very slow sustainable growth.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, And I also feel like if it had never
taken off, I love that you probably still would have
kept doing it because you enjoyed it so much. And
I don't think that we ask ourselves often enough, particularly,
I mean, the show is about joy. We don't ask
ourselves enough, like do I love it so it doesn't
matter if it becomes my full time job or not.
And there's a lot to be said about people keeping
(22:45):
their passion as their hobby and maybe not commercializing it
because sometimes it does kill the joy.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
A little bit. I've definitely been through through parts of
some doubt, right, Yeah, absolutely like felt times where I
was like, should have stayed a hoppy. Yeah, it's really
fun just turning it off.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
But I mean it has obviously gone on to like
absolutely disrupt the media landscape and provide so much value
to as you said, a whole generation who wouldn't otherwise
have been like accidentally fed the news and then suddenly
like whoa, I'm informd and they didn't even realize I was,
which is it's so niche and you've done it so cleverly.
But what was that big turning point where you had
(23:24):
been slogging, as you said, doing the same thing.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
What changed? Was it COVID? Was it that kind of timing? Yeah,
it was COVID. Oh, it was a combination of COVID,
Black Lives Matter in the US election, it was like
these three news moments. All of our growth is around
big news moments. It's nothing like business focus. It's always
news moments because people come to us for that. But
COVID especially, you know, I always say that it's a
(23:47):
privilege not to care about the news because it means
that it doesn't affect you, or certainly like policy doesn't
affect you, because you're you know, separated from that. And
during COVID, no one could turn off the news because
you know, we had politicians telling us, yeah, where you're
going while you were doing all of that. And so
we saw this like huge, huge increase in our audience
(24:10):
because we were, you know, at a time where there
was so much sensationalism and so much fear. We were
just bringing the facts and there was no opinion there's nothing.
It was like, here are the COVID numbers, here's what
you can do. Off you go, and right, pretty coloring exactly,
you got me in the house, but it's green. And
(24:31):
it was around that time that we had a lot
of influencers share our work, and so we grew quite
substantially because of that, and by the end of twenty twenty,
it was looking like, Okay, we probably need to rethink
this whole full time, yeah job thing because it was
mildly unsustainable. And then we raised around a capitol at
the end of twenty twenty to be able to quit
(24:53):
our jobs and go full time in twenty twenty one.
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And that would have felt like, after the three or
four years at one level, like a rapid turnaround, like,
oh my god, my full time.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
It was terrifying. Like I distinctly remember my boss when
I quit my job, perhaps not overly kindly telling me
that like, this was a huge risk, and like, was
I sure I wanted to do this? And you know,
I was leaving behind stability and growth and all of
those things, And that's that's all true. I was though
I think she was potentially willing me to fail. And
(25:26):
so I set out to do the opposite exactly. It
was so terrifying and it was so new to me,
like even the concept of raising capital. I had no
idea what that meant, and no one I knew had
done it. So it was just about figuring it out
as we went and taking the audience.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
I guess on the journey, I've loved listening to you
talk about risk. I think it's been like a big
factor in not only taking on news that in itself
there is so much accountability, as you said, particularly at
high news volume times like COVID, When you're putting yourselves
out there as an authority, you have.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
To get it right.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
So it's not like normal influencer work where sure, if
I accidentally get the name of a Mesca roll, like
you know, it's not really a big deal. But not
just that when you're leaving your job, it is. There's
a risk matrix that's involved. And you've talked a lot
about your the political investor. Or. If it was an
advisor giving you advice about not being reckless in either direction,
(26:22):
what did that look like for you, because in hindsight,
it probably feels like that was the only logical decision
you could have made was role with this, But at
the time, it's like your world is falling down. How
do you make late picture pivot decisions?
Speaker 1 (26:36):
He was so hard. Again, I think having someone to
do it with. I often say that Sam and I
have very different risk appetites. He has a very high
risk appetite. I have, potentially in the past had a
low one. But then I also think a lot about
what actually goes into that definition. And like, I took
(26:56):
the biggest risk I could have ever taken. I quit
my job and better startup, Like, it doesn't get more
risk in than that. So I'm trying to rethink and
recondition myself and how I think about risk. But it was, yeah,
it was about not being reckless in either direction. It
was Okay, if I'm going to take this risk, how
do I mitigate that risk? How do I ensure that
(27:18):
there is that stability? Okay, it's taking a portion of
that funding to have a salary at the beginning from
day one, so that I'm not worried about paying rent,
I'm not worried about buying dinner. It can you know,
have that foundation of stability. And since that time, it's
meant being you know, very I don't want to say conservative,
but just very considered in the way that we build
(27:38):
this business so that we can be sustainable. So much
of news media goes really hard, really quickly and dies
a very fast death. And for us, it was we
know we have a place in this market. We need
to be here to stay, and we want to be
there for the audience. So that means like growing slowly
and sustainably, and we've done that over the past four
years since we quit our jobs. My gosh, four years,
(28:01):
Oh my god, how is that possibilities?
Speaker 2 (28:04):
So you also mentioned that the topic of risk is
a bit gendered, which I definitely agree with. And I
also think that you have been in a lot of
industries in your time that are heavily male dominated or
traditionally have been not more less and less hopefully do
you think that in having Sam as a male, that's
(28:25):
been a powerful a powerful thing that's worked in your favor.
Do you think, like, how do you feel about that mix? Yeah,
has added a legitimacy in times where you might have
been underestimated being so young, or how has it kind
of played out?
Speaker 1 (28:37):
It's interesting because I think that the bias that people
come to us with is an age thing, not a
gender lens, which is interesting. You know. I have found
certainly that our industry has a real awareness of the
gender gap and there is a big effort to rectify it,
(28:58):
and so I haven't felt like we are treated any
differently from one another. What I have found, though, is
that people don't take us seriously because we're young, and
it is quite a legacy industry, Like there are these
you know, really deeply embedded pillars of the media, like
two of them who haven't been challenged for a really
(29:23):
long time. And so, you know, I always talk about
the fact that the first budget lock up we went into,
we were you know, called the TikTokers, and that sort
of idea is more where I've found challenging rather than
and like there's stuff with Sam about you know. I
think we're often asked different questions about our journey and
(29:45):
things that we reflect on, but I don't think that
our opportunities have differed at all, which I'm really grateful
for and really easy. Yeah, I think I feel really
proud of what we've done as a partnership and how
we've supported to each other through it all.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Oh, that's really positive.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
I'm so glad to hear that, but also interested about
the age thing because I would love to know if
you do have any tips for people in the situation
where they're underestimated, because I think for various reasons it
happens a lot.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, does that fuel your fire? Like I'm still talking
about it four years later, I have such a hang up.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
No.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
I think that it's to prove them wrong. Like prove
them wrong. They thought that we were a blip and
that we couldn't be taken seriously as a business in
this industry. And rather than tell them we can, we
showed them that we can. And I think, you know,
putting in the hard work to show with empirical evidence
that you are as important and have as much to
(30:47):
add as anyone else. I think that is so fundamental.
And you know, I often get asked by people, how
do we include young people in XYZ. I'm like, just
ask them, you just ask you know where they live
on the internet exactly, And there's so much you know,
people think that young people are this like enigma, and
(31:11):
so often it can help the business case to have
different perspectives and different voices. And I just think more
of that is absolutely a good thing. Yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
So then when you did get to that point of
wanting to grow aggressively and have that empirical evidence to
back you up versus before where you were like, I
don't know how as muchizer as I don't what was
the strategy around that you have eighteen staff now or
is it started as the two of you? How did
you learn how to sell advertising or how did you
work out your staff? And yeah, and knowing your data
(31:43):
and how to kind of leverage that, like what and
you mentioned a rebrand, Yeah that didn't work, Like how
do you learn from those experiences and know what over
the last four years what's worked and what hasn't.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Honestly, it's just what you said, it's learning from the mistakes.
So for like, I remember we we hired our first person, Tara,
who I'm obsessed with and has stayed with us this
whole time. And on day one we hired her and
we were like, okay, so can you make us money now?
And she was like how, We don't know. And I
(32:16):
distinctly remember we were sitting in an investor's office at
the time, because obviously we didn't have an office. How
does one get an office? And we just spoke to
as many people as we could about all the different
models there were for making money in media, and I
remember it was like the stupidest thing I've ever said.
Sam and I were doing a talk for the industry
(32:37):
and we got up and said, we will never do advertising.
We have a different model of making money. Like how obnoxious.
Like ninety percent of our revenue now is advertising. Mistake
learned from exactly, and I think so much in those
early days we were just forced out of necessity to learn.
(33:00):
And so you know, we had to launch a newsletter
because Instagram and Facebook took news off its platform one
day because they were having a fight with the government.
You haven't got about this. Just the first week of
going full time, it was really chilled that timing. Yeah, yeah,
me too. Sitting there, I was like, Okay, so investors
have just given us money for a project that like
(33:21):
possibly won't exist tomorrow. So that's really good. But that
forced our hand into diversification, and that was a really
important lesson that you cannot have a rented audience. You
need an owned audience that is not at the you know,
bequest exactly the algorithm, and so all of these lessons
that felt very difficult at the time have forced our
(33:44):
hand into building something that is very durable. We are
not reliant on one platform, we are not reliant on
revenue stream. You know, like all of these things are
so important, and I think it would be silly of
me to say that we sat down wrote a strategy
document to get here and now here. I didn't know
what a strategy document looked like. I remember the first
time we wrote a strategy I said to my mentors, so,
(34:06):
do you have a template, Like, where do.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
We can do?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
We all go genuinely wrote it into canva. I was like,
strategy documentary. Yeah, it probably came up with something. It
was your one from me exactly exactly. But it's like
I was so confused where we had all learned this,
and you know, reporting back to investors, it was like,
is there an email template? What do they want to know?
(34:29):
And we, you know, our first couple, I remember we
got responses saying I don't actually care about this much information,
like please say less, and I was like, okay, also
a recurring thing. All of these things have happened over time,
and we've learned from each milestone where to go. But
I think the one thing that hasn't changed is our
mission and what we intuitively know, which is we know
(34:51):
how to explain the news to young people. Everything else
has developed and professionalized, and that hasn't It is still
at the core of who we are. Yeah, and you
do it so well well we try to.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
So why would you rebrand? What was the name thing?
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Okay, So we came up with the idea for TDA
at a cafe. We came up with the colors and
everything that day, like immediately when we met each other,
and so I think I was like a year and
a maybe two years ago. Now we were like, all right,
this isn't very professional, Like we came up with everything
on primary colors fully primarys. Yeah, like hex COO don't
(35:28):
know her. So we decided to professionalize and do a
bit of a rebrand and so we changed yeah bitsleek.
We were like, we'll change the colors just a little bit,
we will change how the newsletter looks, will change the
jingle for the podcast. Little did I know that you
can't change au fond you will be in the court
(35:51):
of Instagram law. And we just I think we got
probably like fifteen thousand messages, and my funniest ones were
the people that said, how dare you do this without
asking us? Okay, you are beholden to the people, do you, investors? Yeah,
we are beholden to the people, which, you know, great
(36:11):
exercise in brand buildings. Cool. We've built something that people
feel deeply connected, they feel like they own it. That is, yes,
you know, unambiguously a good thing. We had to change
our font back, we had to change everything back. I
got like a mass retraction. All Now there are university
like modules studying our rebrand and what not to do.
(36:33):
Mildly traumatizing for me, but no worries. But again we
learned we spent too much money. But we learned, you know,
like so much of who we are is that we
speak across from our audience, not down to them. We
don't think we're better than them. We don't have this
like deeply sleek professional thing like Canva went down a
couple of weeks ago when we wrote our interest rate
(36:55):
update on notes apt and just posted.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
It and we all loved it and exactly this is
a trend now.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Throughout multi billion dollar company. But I think that all
of that goes to say that we need to maintain
that authenticity because that's what our audience comes for. They
can get the news from anywhere, but they come to be.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Wanted in that Fontabe and those colors.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
I'm never separate from you again.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
If anything, it was an incredibly brand affirming exercise. As
much as it felt like a sort of non success was.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
It absolutely was, and it like it haunts me in
my sleep, but it was great.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Now. Something else that you mentioned early on, in fact,
at the very beginning, was the challenge to your mental
health of being in a relentlessly never ending, non sleep
inducing the industry and news cycle, and obviously mental health
has been a big part of your family story, and
I think, particularly on a podcast that is about finding joy.
(38:02):
The flip side of that is that, particularly someone like
you who does look so outwardly successful and directed, and
you seem like the most well adjusted human, so intelligent
and so driven, it's the color, it's the font, But
you suffered immeasurable grief and a shock trauma at such
(38:25):
a young age, Like it actually blows my mind to
think that at just twenty eight you have achieved so
much coming from the age of sixteen, losing your father,
So how did you, at that crucial time of your
life find your way back? Like, as much as you're
comfortable telling you about that time.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
One of the words that I hear a lot is resilience,
and like, oh, you were so resilient, And to me,
there's just not another option, Like finding my way back
was the only option I had to go on sixteen,
As you said, I was about to finish my year
twelve exams, and my dad had instilled in us so
(39:08):
many core values, but you know, continuing to better ourselves
and better our education and all of these things like
that was really important to him. And like my love
of the news one hundred percent comes from my dad,
Like like I think back to my childhood and it's
just the ABC jingle twenty four to seven, like deep
(39:30):
inside my psyche. And so now if things feel challenging,
I do have that to keep me going. It's like, well,
he would be so proud, Like I know fully that
he would be so proud because we grew up in
a household that yelled at each other about politics and
the news from like the age of I don't know what,
(39:50):
and he was responsible for cultivating that sort of environment,
and so I think it's look, it has added a
lot of depth to who I am. I think that
it also allows me, though, to hopefully tell stories more sensitively.
I think that part of why we wanted to create
(40:12):
TDA was to tell the stories of young people and
tell them really meaningfully. And you know, just recently we
had the first openly bisexual player on Speak to TDA
and share his story, Mitch Brown, and what an incredible
human being he is. But being able to have created
an environment where we can have so much depth to
(40:33):
the conversations and the relationships that we create, I think
that is what I'm really proud of. And I think
that is what I can directly attribute to the very
difficult times at the age of sixteen. But it's interesting
because I don't remember so much of that time. It's Yeah,
I think it's just a trauma response that like, there
is a full year of my life that I just
(40:54):
like do not remember. And then I went back to
school and I just kept going, and then I went
straight to UNI, and then I went straight into the workforce,
and so there's never really been a moment of pause. Yeah,
but it's nice in this job, I think because I
get moments like this to reflect and to have that
opportunity to just stop and think about where I've be
(41:16):
and where I'm going and you know what comes.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Next, and that it's become a real legacy piece because
he has influenced so much of your passion for.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
What he's doing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
I just think about me at sixteen and how emotionally
immature I was at that age, and the forced growing
up and confronting a depth of emotion that now obviously
it shines through that that's sort of where it came from.
But that you were able to go on is so
extraordinary because I think it would have crushed most sixteen
(41:47):
year olds, and yet you have gone on to have
like not even a blip in the timeline of this
incredible career. That drive continued, that enthusiasm for life has continued.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, it is interesting to see how each of us
have My brothers and I have done it differently. Like
one of my brothers wrote a book about my dad
and our family. Another brother, Zach, you know, has now
dedicated his life to helping people so that other families
don't lose their dads in the way that we did.
And I just like that also is just really special
to me that like all of us are honoring him
(42:18):
in a different way, and mine is that I can't
get the ABC jingle out of my head.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
And you'll never change your jingles lesson less full set exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
But I just think, you know, there's I grew up
really quickly, and it's a blessing and a curse to
have that. But I think that for where I am now,
having had that sort of life experience means that, yeah,
I can look at things differently, and I think that
that is probably a very good thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Oh, so you speak about it so beautifully and it
is I think incredibly encouraging for anyone who is perhaps
in the throes of grief right now. That of course
that never changes being part of your story, but it
becomes easy to speak about and to build a legacy on.
Do you find that it makes you more aware now
(43:08):
of looking after your mental health? And is that really
difficult in the context of what you do. Do you
have any time where you do switch off? Because part
of CZA is the joy that you have that's outside
your work. Yeah, and that was the news before you
made that your job. You replaced it with other forms
of kind of switching off.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Yeah, it's in the process. It's had to be a
very concerted effort because it's also on social media, so
I can't even you know, switch off from that. I
was really bad at prioritizing it and have gotten way
better and have been very successful now at creating boundaries
(43:50):
for myself and therapy and all of the good things.
And it took me a while to get here. Like
at the beginning, I thought this like sense of busyness
and having to always look busy and feel busy was
like the sign of success. And I'm coping and exactly,
I'm on top of everything. I'm juggling all of these
plates and in reality, I was juggling zero of the plane,
(44:10):
so they were all crashing around me. And now I
feel like I'm doing a much better job at it
and just taking the moments for me. You know, got
married last year, being able to feel really present there
and present with my partner. He's also building his own company,
so that's a fun household to be of two people, like,
(44:31):
oh my god, well, this job because tomorrow and finding
those pockets of joy are more important than anything, you know,
rediscovering content, not from a content brain has been something
important to me, like not reading stuff to you know,
speak about it better or talk about it on a podcast,
but just to be able to read something for the
(44:53):
sake of reading it. So had to turn away from
nonfiction for a really long time because I was like,
I just need fiction and just read. Finding that love
has been so important for me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Sorry, this is just a random question that doesn't logically
fit into the all of that at all, but.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
I've been thinking about it a lot.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
And one thing that really frustrates me sometimes is that
good news, which is like our page is all about
sharing good news stories, is so much harder to access,
so much less prolific, and just performs a lot less
because I don't know, humans just have this like intensity
towards tragedy and controversy. When you watch the metrics of
(45:32):
what goes well, do you find good news is getting more?
Speaker 1 (45:36):
I love this question so much so when we started,
a lot of people taught us I don't read the
news because it's too depressing. I was like, okay, noted,
I'm going to fix that, and so from day one
we've always had a good news story. It's the hardest
thing to find, but right always always the hardest thing
to find, like whoever is tasked with that on the day,
it's like, great is the indangered species. It's no longer endangered,
(46:02):
but it has been. One of the most gratifying parts
of it all is having that constant good news. And
so last year I launched a weekly good newsletter and
on a Sunday it's like the one piece of contient
that I still do. I, together with some of my team,
write a good newsletter that is filled with nothing but goodness,
(46:23):
nothing but good news, and so we friend it's just
the best and like it makes me go into the
week feeling better about the world. Like I wrote about
on Sunday, I wrote about a woman who for her
birthday she was a cancer survivor and she had gone
to the hospital where she had received treatment, stood outside
and paid for everyone's parking. And it's just those small
(46:44):
stories that you just like. In media, the common refrain
is if it bleeds, it leads. So if it's gore,
if it's crime, whatever it is, like, that's what leads,
that's what gets eyeballs. I'm like, no, we're not doing that.
We need to change the narrative again. It's this conditioning
audience want that because they've always gotten it, and like
our Good newsletter has fifty thousand subscribers, there are so
(47:05):
many people who want it, who desire that like goodness
in the world, and it's not celebrities doing crazy things.
It's just everyday people doing beautiful, beautiful, giving generous things.
And so I feel so strongly about good news that
it needs to be part of a media diet because
otherwise you turn away from it all and I understand why,
and again I want to stop that.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yeah, I'm so glad I remember that question because I
think about it all the time when I'm like, I
just am never going to compete with the actual like
intense news cycle because it doesn't have that shock. Fact, yeah,
good news doesn't have It has warmth, but it doesn't
have shock. And I love that. You're like, no, I'm
putting it in there anyway. Yeah, because it's important.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
It's important, and it's important for us as like fully
formed humans to know more about what is happening that
is good in the world and to highlight that humanity
is really good. It's really good, and we just don't
hear enough about it. Yeah. Oh yeah, well, Zara thank
you so much.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Congratulations on everything that you're doing, and I can't wait
to see you go from strength to strength in the
right colors and in the right fond.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Well, now that we're family, I mean thank you for
having me.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
It is such a funny world where you feel like
you know someone well before you meet them, even though
you've just followed each other online for a really long time.
But it's even lovelier when you do finally take that
relationship into the real world. Zara is so clever articular
doing such incredible work. I personally wouldn't be able to
keep up with the new cycle without TDA. And if
(48:37):
you enjoyed listening along, please do share the episode, tagging
Zara and us to keep growing the neighborhood as far
and wide as possible.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Every little bit counts.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
If you haven't seen, we have released tickets to our
first live show in so long with the incredible guest
Headley Thomas, raising funds for Safe Steps, and we've nearly.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Sold out already.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
I had no idea that was going to happen, but
I will pop the links in the show notes along
with more information, and in the meantime, I hope you're
having a wonderful week and seizing your yay
Like prove them wrong. They thought that we were a
blip and that we couldn't be taken seriously as a
business in this industry, and rather than tell them we can,
we showed them that we can.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
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
(00:34):
will bear all the facets of seizing your yea. I'm
Sarah Davidson or a spoonful of Sarah. A lawyer turned
fu entrepreneurs wapped the suits and heels to co found
matcha Maiden and matcha Milk Bar.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Sez the Ya is.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
A series of conversations on finding a life you love
and exploring the self doubt, challenge, joy and fulfillment along
the way. There would be very few Australians who haven't
encountered The Daily Oz at one point or another, consuming
the latest headlines from around the world in unmistakable bright
signature colors and a no nonsense vernacular. Since twenty seventeen,
(01:11):
TDA has been disrupting the media landscape by repackaging leading
news stories in a digestible, engaging way for younger, traditionally
news avoidant audiences. What you may not know, however, is
that A. It all began between two complete strangers. B
was all designed and executed at that initial blind coffee
catchup between said strangers and C, with both of them
(01:35):
working outside of journalism and outside of the media at
the time. After years of following both her work and
her path ya behind the scenes that led her to TDA,
I'm so thrilled to have had one of the incredible
co founders, Sara Sidler on the show today. You all
know I love a pivot filled pathia, especially one with
a defining happy accident, and Sara is the queen of both,
(01:57):
going from early leanings towards education to climbing the ladder
in government of politics before accidentally falling into this dream career.
You'll hear how she built a side hustle with a
stranger into a media monster, with a few fun side
stories about managing risk, the power of underestimation, and a
failed rebrand, and all of this still before the age
(02:17):
of thirty years old. We also touch on the loss
of Zara's father to suicide when she was just sixteen
years old, an unfathomable and defining moment both for her
and her family, including one of her brothers, Zach, a
clinical psychologist, researcher, and global director of Men's Health at November,
who many of you may remember, we were also lucky
(02:38):
enough to welcome to the show, So please do take
care while listening to those segments, and do not hesitate
to seek help if you need further support. Zara is
extraordinary in so many ways, eloquent beyond her years, and.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
A joy to chat with.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I hope you guys enjoyed this one as much as
I did.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Zara Sidler, Welcome to Seza. Thank you for having me
so excited. Gosh, I'm so excited coming.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I feel like you are one of those internet besties
that I have where it's like, likewise, I'm just catching
up with an old friend.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
And then I was like, wait, no, but we haven't met.
But it is an old friend. It is an old friend.
And look, you've interviewed my brother on this podcast, so
it's a family affair, we're basically related. Basically where it
can end. Now all's done, and.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I mean before we get into your actual story, which
is incredible, especially given guys, I just have to preface
everything that comes next with the fact that Zara is
not even thirty years old. Like that blows feel one
hundred if that guy's my joint, You've done one hundred
years worth of things in your lifetime. But before we
(03:48):
get into it, tell us what it takes. I mean,
you are like at the front line of news and
delivering that to hundreds and thousands of Australians. I was
looking at the last twenty four hours. You've done ten
Instagram post some different stories just in that time. Three
podcast episodes have also come out in that time.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
You just mentioned you.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Do two podcast episodes every single day. I mean, it's
what ten o'clock, not even what have you done this
morning to get here and to have kind of ticked
the new cycle delivery?
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Okay, good question. No two days are the same, which
is the joy and the peril of a news cycle.
But every day for me starts the same, and anyone
who has like good mental health and good well being
is going to hate what I'm going to say that,
which is that I start my day every morning by
reading the news. Like I roll over and eleven seconds
(04:37):
after my brain is on, I'm reading the news. And
I know how bad that is for me, but I
just can't help it. I made my hobby my job,
and so I would have probably done that anyway, and
now it's my job to do it. So listen exactly
kind of thrilled. So I have like a bunch of
newsletters and news sites and just news consumption that I
(04:59):
do every single morning, you know, around six am. Start
with that. Then we get a newsletter out by seven am.
So working deliverables by seven, seven days a week, lunch. Yeah,
we always talk about like why didn't we call it
the monthly or the you know yearly os? What were
we thinking? Well, we're like at least quarter every single day.
(05:20):
So by now I've done a nine am pitch meeting
where all of the team have pitched what they want
to write for the day. We've got a bunch of journos,
all young, all amazing, and everyone started with their day.
And now is where there's a bit of calm before
we get into the swing of things and start editing
and getting everything out the door. So this is sweet spot, right.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Well, I felt very very lucky to have you, given
how much happens in the morning for you, and it
is such a unique place to be where you do
have to, like I often say to people, you know,
you can wait till tomorrow, like put your mental health first.
But there are certain industries where you can't, Like the
morning is your prime, like the currency of things is
your currency.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So yeah, it is. But I do always need to
remind myself that there are a bunch of news sites
that people will consume and we don't actually have to
be the first. And you know, there is certainly a timeliness,
but we're not saving lives and we do need to
remind ourselves of that sometimes. So yeah, we can take
our time to make sure it's right. But there is
(06:19):
this relentlessness that every single day you wake up and
you do the news and it doesn't stop trying to
ask you to stop for a minute. It's like one day, well,
we'll come back to that.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Because I really do want to tap into how you
have decided your place in the market, because I think
that's really difficult. We're all facing this rat race of
like relentless speed and pace.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
But the news is just something different.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
So the fact that you have been able to get
that perspective, I mean, what you guys do so well
is you don't just deliver, and you repackage it in
a way that is digestible to a population of people
who don't necessarily love the news and who don't consume
it the same way. And that's harder. I actually think
being concise.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Is way harder. So we'll get to that.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
But what I love to do in these episodes is
start by going all the way back to the very beginning,
and for you that was like yesterday because you're a
one minute old. But at least going back to the
chapters that came before where you are now. Yeah, because
there are a lot of listeners who haven't found their passion,
let alone turned it into a profession at that, who
(07:21):
don't know what their direction is, who want to hear
that it's possible to discover something, you know, to fall
into something by accident. So let's go back to childhood. Okay,
three brothers, right back to the beginning. An incredible, talented,
well known family for many different reasons, daughter of your
late father, who was a doctor and we'll come back
(07:41):
to him. But he was also the nephew of a
famed architect, so already got some very strong heritage there.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, except everyone's like, so are you really creative? Like
are you an architect? And I'm like, you have never
met a less creative person in your whole life. Ask
me to draw. No, no, no, no no. I got
the mina brow and that's it is the strong eye.
That's about it.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
I don't see it.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
So you're maintaining that really well. So that's a skill set.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Then, also very strong matriarch at the same time, So
even though three brothers for you, strong women in your
family has been a big influence. And your grandmother who
who fled Austria, so you've got so many family roots
going on. How did that create expectations or influences.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
For you to choose who you wanted to be? Great question.
I think for me it all created a sense of momentum.
There was always momentum in my household. We were always
just encouraged to keep moving. And you just mentioned my
dad in that sense. He based his entire career around
(08:45):
helping others and he was a GP but he specialized
in addiction medicine, so he was helping the most vulnerable
in the community to deal with their addictions. And so
social justice and the sense of momentum of always moving forward,
those were kind of the two key things that I
grew up with, and it's really interesting to see how
it's manifested in each of us differently. You spoke to
(09:07):
my brother Zach, and his whole life's work now is
to help men have better health outcomes for themselves and
to feel a sense of masculinity that is healthy, and
so that's how it's manifested for him, and for me
it's I want to help people feel empowered to engage
with the world around them. Of Course, when I was
a kid, I had no idea what I was going
to do. I just wanted to, you know, have conversations,
(09:31):
meet people. I was always loud, always breggarious. Every school
report said, please shut up, you're speaking too much. Nice.
It was the best childhood and we had so much
curiosity and room for movement, and it was a really
special environment to grow up in.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Even reading the small snippets that are out there about
the family background you have in that time, it's interesting
you said momentum, because I was like you just none
of you, the four kids in your generation, were ever
going to do nothing like you were always going to
and you all have had this insatiable sense of curiosity
and learning which has manifested in different ways. But I
think it's really interesting. But I read that you initially
(10:10):
thought that that would come out in education, that you
wanted to be a teacher. So how long did that last?
And then when did you sort of work out that
actually it was more politics and media and which has
turned out to be the interesting where you live.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
I was obsessed with my teachers at school, like I
was such a teacher's pet. I always felt like teachers
took so much time and care to walk me through
things and to explain things, and it was just so
fundamental to my love of learning. What's more than that, though,
I think I loved explaining things to people very early
on interest and so for me, I was like, well,
(10:48):
if I like explaining things, education is a way that
you get to share that with other people. And so
I was like, okay, I'll do education. And then I
don't know how long it lasted until my brother actually
talked me out of it, which really he said to me,
why don't you start with something more broad, something more general,
and then if you do want to go into teaching,
(11:09):
you can do that after, like as a master's. And
you know, I chose to do just a glorified arts degree.
It's international and Global studies. It's just like four words
that mean the same thing. It does sound very fancy,
though it does, but it's just an arts degree, not
just it is an arts degree. And he was like,
why don't you do that and then just zero in
later so that you like leave your options open. Basically,
(11:32):
it was really sound advice at the time. They tell
me how to do shout out to Zach, thank you
for that. And I followed it, and thank god I did,
because I did this really broad degree where I kind
of tried everything and I realized that I loved politics
and I loved learning about it. I went on exchange
to Washington, d C. The weekend that Donald Trump was
(11:55):
inaugurated for the first time. I went, stuff, I, well,
it's it's one, you know, nation world defining moment. It'll
never happen again. I have to go again. I thought
I was, I thought I was something special there, but
I'm really glad that I did what I did, because
(12:18):
it opened so many doors of curiosity for me that
perhaps I might not have had if I'd gone straight
into what I thought would be my profession.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, that's so interesting, and I found so many parallels reading.
Even though we did very different things and had very
different initial pathways, it sounded like you had the same
sense as I did of I don't know what I
want to do, but I'm just going to climb whatever
I'm doing at the time with as much gusto as
I can to set myself up best for whatever.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
That next thing is.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And I actually never really found out what that was
until I accidentally fell into something else.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Which is the same as it happened to you.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
But is that what you were thinking at the time,
Like what was driving those steps Washington, then coming back
then sky News and then moving into government, Like what
were you thinking at that time? Was it I want
to be here or did you still not know how
the pieces would fit together?
Speaker 1 (13:08):
I had no idea. I just wanted to get as
much experience as I could, and so I went into
a whole bunch of really diverse jobs. I, as you said,
worked in media. I like was connecting the microphones for
famous politicians at three in the morning when they didn't
want to be there. I didn't want to be there,
But that opened so many doors for me because I
(13:29):
later worked for a politician who I met while connecting
her microphone at that time. No, she was just there
for an interview and I was like, I will speak
at you now. For the next ten minutes. Rehearsing childhood,
I did a bunch of things. I had no idea
how it would all add up. Honestly, I still don't
know if it did add up, as much as just
giving the experience to learn and see the world differently. Yeah,
(13:51):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I think it's a nice reminder. A lot of people
do have a plan, but a lot of us are
just doing thing to thing, and then one day you
stumble on the thing like this is my thing. Yeah,
but it's okay to be putting your all into the
bits that go beforehand, and you never actually know which relationships,
or which moments, or which skill sets are going to
be the ones that are valuable.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
That's fine, that's just it's only when you look back
that you can understand that everything forms a picture. But
at the beginning It's a bit like Picasso, like, yeah,
what am I looking at it? It becomes clear slowly.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
I've always described as like this jigsaw puzzle that starts
like this absolute clusterfuck.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Of a mess and then like you still a bit
of a clam but just a still waiting for it
to get pretty.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
And so again, it's funny you were happy climbing the
ladder that you were on, And I think that's another
thing I loved about your stories.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
You weren't unhappy in your job. You weren't looking for
a way that was I was like, I am in
this industry that I don't see young women in and
I want to continue climbing. I'm like super stoked to
be here, and I would have stayed in it.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
So in that light, how did it come about? Like
what was the genesis of this idea that now has
become what we all know you for?
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, the genesis is a LinkedIn message? Huge huge? So Sam,
who's my now co founder, posted on LinkedIn that he
wanted to start something called the Daily Os. I could
find it somewhere, but it said something like, who wants
to help me build Australia's next great media thing? And
I was like me, okay, like ten friends, send it
(15:28):
to me. Sam and I had never met, but we
had a lot of mutual friends. We were like overlapping
social circles. We met for a coffee in Bundai and
I was like, all right, what are we talking about here?
And he said, I think that we should start something
for young people, and I was like, I'm a young person.
(15:49):
I mean that sounds great cool, And we had this
like four hour coffee where we came up with the
idea for it, and it was just based on the
fact that both of us and we often talk about this,
both of us were the people who were explain the
news to our friends. Our friends would come to us,
they'd say, I'm going on a date. Can you tell
me what's happening in X y Z, And so we're like, cool,
let's just make an Instagram page that does that and
(16:10):
reach our friends. And it was only ever intended to
reach our friends, like it was never intended to be. Actually,
I think Sam intended for it to be because he's
big thinker, big dreamer, big plans for the world, and
the little old of me was like, well, this sounds
like a fun pet project. And so it was born
that day and now it is what it is. Yeah,
(16:31):
see even that.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I mean, I don't want to diminish how powerful it's
become by calling it a happy accident, but I do
want to later the point to people listening that you
don't have to set out planning this for years and
years and years. You didn't even know that this was coming.
And I love that it came out of news prepping
people for dates. The weirdest ideas can hit you at
the weirdest of times. I feel like all the news
(16:52):
media that covers your story also talk about you and
Sam being besties maybe now, yes, but the fact that
you didn't know each other is even.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
And it was like instant best friend soulmate vibes, Like
we met each other and were like, oh, like, you
get where my brain's at. And I genuinely think we've
spoken every single day of our lives since that day.
So now it was like seven years ago. Now we
were the ring bearers at each other's weddings like weeks. Yeah,
it's a very special friendship. And for anyone who's thinking
(17:21):
of starting something, the one piece of advice I would
give is try and find someone to do it with
who you want to spend every day with because it
like you go through the trenches, but having him and
being able to grow this little thing into our work
and our livelihoods, it's so special doing it with your
best mate. It couldn't be better.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
And I love that you're breaking that mold of I
think we do have this idea of the ingredients that
make a great business or the ingredients that make a
big life pivot story, and it's always well, we'd always
been friends for twenty years before, and we'd always talked
about this stuff. And it's so cool that you guys,
we're not speaking about it and that that.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Can work so well.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
And I also often say that the businesses that don't
start intending to become massive often do better because you're
a naivity about what it does involve. B Because you
don't bring that pressure to it. You actually do it
the way you want to.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
I think it's very authentic when you're just building something
for you, rather than like having that perfect market fit,
product fit all that. I mean, nice for me to
say now, but back then I didn't know what anything was. Yeah,
let's just let's do this for our mates and hopefully
people will like it. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
The other story that often comes out is we started
and then the next week it blew up, and then
it always you know, hungry doory from there. Whereas for
you guys, I was reading that like three to four
years later, you were still punching out these updates, mainly
to your mum's.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Which is beautiful and delightful. Yeah, but again we get
these stories of overnight success. It's my favorite overnight success story. Yeah,
it was a long night's sleep.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Things don't happen overnight, and it does take sometimes the
right circumstances are the right timing, and if you'd given
up a day earlier then COVID, for example, you might
never have known what you could turn into. And I
think I think people forget that the best things take
a really long time and a lot of patience and yeah,
so long, but talk to us about that time, Like
(19:27):
you didn't have the success in inverta commas then that you.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Do success there was I was working in a particularly stressful,
high pressure job at the time. Sam was a lawyer
at one of the top firms in the country. We
were doing TDA before work, after work at you know,
eleven PM, and as you said, no one was watching,
(19:51):
no one was looking. I think we stayed stagnant on
like one thousand followers for three full years and no
movement at all. But we just genuinely loved it, and
we did it because we figured that the news should
be about building habit and that you know, looking back,
that that habit building and that consistency was key to
(20:14):
why it did grow and why there was that virality.
I think I probably would have given up like seven
years earlier, Yeah, exactly like first day. But we kept
each other accountable, and you know, we would text the
news to each other every single morning, and that meant
that when we did blow up unexpectedly, we knew exactly
(20:38):
what to do. We had done it so many times
that nothing actually changed because we had laid all the
foundations of how we were going to do this and
the tone and how we were going to approach it,
and it just meant when the time came, we were ready. Yeah.
That's so powerful.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
And I also love that you mentioned you kept going
just because you loved it. And I think a lot
of the time, our underlying driver is it needs to
be successful, and the metrics we set for what defines
that success are numbers, popularity, revenue figures. But sometimes I say,
(21:12):
particularly in business, when people are scaling, I'm often like, yes,
I get it from the outside, growing bigger necessarily means better.
But for you, I actually loved running a medium sized business.
Like the bigger it got, the less I was engaged
with the customer. There were so many ways I was happier,
yeah when it was smaller, and if I could have
chosen to maintain that.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
So interesting part of me is like that was the
bit that yeah, there's a sweet spot. Yeah yeah, But
I think for us, I actually just made a video
about this. I had a full time job, I had
a salary, I had stability that allowed me to grow
really slowly and sustainably, and you could afford to do that.
(21:52):
I could afford to do that. Had I taken a
huge risk and quit my job to go full time
on TDA, like, it would have been a really different story.
And so I you know, people always ask when I
knew the right time to quit my full time job was,
and my answer is always when I had the financial
security to do so. And I think that that's a
big thing of like, if you are chasing that very
quick growth versus the you know, long term sustainable growth,
(22:15):
Like there's this give and take and it is less
sustainable for you as an individual, I believe so, Yeah,
it was. It was very slow sustainable growth.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, And I also feel like if it had never
taken off, I love that you probably still would have
kept doing it because you enjoyed it so much. And
I don't think that we ask ourselves often enough, particularly,
I mean, the show is about joy. We don't ask
ourselves enough, like do I love it so it doesn't
matter if it becomes my full time job or not.
And there's a lot to be said about people keeping
(22:45):
their passion as their hobby and maybe not commercializing it
because sometimes it does kill the joy.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
A little bit. I've definitely been through through parts of
some doubt, right, Yeah, absolutely like felt times where I
was like, should have stayed a hoppy. Yeah, it's really
fun just turning it off.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
But I mean it has obviously gone on to like
absolutely disrupt the media landscape and provide so much value
to as you said, a whole generation who wouldn't otherwise
have been like accidentally fed the news and then suddenly
like whoa, I'm informd and they didn't even realize I was,
which is it's so niche and you've done it so cleverly.
But what was that big turning point where you had
(23:24):
been slogging, as you said, doing the same thing.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
What changed? Was it COVID? Was it that kind of timing? Yeah,
it was COVID. Oh, it was a combination of COVID,
Black Lives Matter in the US election, it was like
these three news moments. All of our growth is around
big news moments. It's nothing like business focus. It's always
news moments because people come to us for that. But
COVID especially, you know, I always say that it's a
(23:47):
privilege not to care about the news because it means
that it doesn't affect you, or certainly like policy doesn't
affect you, because you're you know, separated from that. And
during COVID, no one could turn off the news because
you know, we had politicians telling us, yeah, where you're
going while you were doing all of that. And so
we saw this like huge, huge increase in our audience
(24:10):
because we were, you know, at a time where there
was so much sensationalism and so much fear. We were
just bringing the facts and there was no opinion there's nothing.
It was like, here are the COVID numbers, here's what
you can do. Off you go, and right, pretty coloring exactly,
you got me in the house, but it's green. And
(24:31):
it was around that time that we had a lot
of influencers share our work, and so we grew quite
substantially because of that, and by the end of twenty twenty,
it was looking like, Okay, we probably need to rethink
this whole full time, yeah job thing because it was
mildly unsustainable. And then we raised around a capitol at
the end of twenty twenty to be able to quit
(24:53):
our jobs and go full time in twenty twenty one.
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And that would have felt like, after the three or
four years at one level, like a rapid turnaround, like,
oh my god, my full time.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
It was terrifying. Like I distinctly remember my boss when
I quit my job, perhaps not overly kindly telling me
that like, this was a huge risk, and like, was
I sure I wanted to do this? And you know,
I was leaving behind stability and growth and all of
those things, And that's that's all true. I was though
I think she was potentially willing me to fail. And
(25:26):
so I set out to do the opposite exactly. It
was so terrifying and it was so new to me,
like even the concept of raising capital. I had no
idea what that meant, and no one I knew had
done it. So it was just about figuring it out
as we went and taking the audience.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
I guess on the journey, I've loved listening to you
talk about risk. I think it's been like a big
factor in not only taking on news that in itself
there is so much accountability, as you said, particularly at
high news volume times like COVID, When you're putting yourselves
out there as an authority, you have.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
To get it right.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
So it's not like normal influencer work where sure, if
I accidentally get the name of a Mesca roll, like
you know, it's not really a big deal. But not
just that when you're leaving your job, it is. There's
a risk matrix that's involved. And you've talked a lot
about your the political investor. Or. If it was an
advisor giving you advice about not being reckless in either direction,
(26:22):
what did that look like for you, because in hindsight,
it probably feels like that was the only logical decision
you could have made was role with this, But at
the time, it's like your world is falling down. How
do you make late picture pivot decisions?
Speaker 1 (26:36):
He was so hard. Again, I think having someone to
do it with. I often say that Sam and I
have very different risk appetites. He has a very high
risk appetite. I have, potentially in the past had a
low one. But then I also think a lot about
what actually goes into that definition. And like, I took
(26:56):
the biggest risk I could have ever taken. I quit
my job and better startup, Like, it doesn't get more
risk in than that. So I'm trying to rethink and
recondition myself and how I think about risk. But it was, yeah,
it was about not being reckless in either direction. It
was Okay, if I'm going to take this risk, how
do I mitigate that risk? How do I ensure that
(27:18):
there is that stability? Okay, it's taking a portion of
that funding to have a salary at the beginning from
day one, so that I'm not worried about paying rent,
I'm not worried about buying dinner. It can you know,
have that foundation of stability. And since that time, it's
meant being you know, very I don't want to say conservative,
but just very considered in the way that we build
(27:38):
this business so that we can be sustainable. So much
of news media goes really hard, really quickly and dies
a very fast death. And for us, it was we
know we have a place in this market. We need
to be here to stay, and we want to be
there for the audience. So that means like growing slowly
and sustainably, and we've done that over the past four
years since we quit our jobs. My gosh, four years,
(28:01):
Oh my god, how is that possibilities?
Speaker 2 (28:04):
So you also mentioned that the topic of risk is
a bit gendered, which I definitely agree with. And I
also think that you have been in a lot of
industries in your time that are heavily male dominated or
traditionally have been not more less and less hopefully do
you think that in having Sam as a male, that's
(28:25):
been a powerful a powerful thing that's worked in your favor.
Do you think, like, how do you feel about that mix? Yeah,
has added a legitimacy in times where you might have
been underestimated being so young, or how has it kind
of played out?
Speaker 1 (28:37):
It's interesting because I think that the bias that people
come to us with is an age thing, not a
gender lens, which is interesting. You know. I have found
certainly that our industry has a real awareness of the
gender gap and there is a big effort to rectify it,
(28:58):
and so I haven't felt like we are treated any
differently from one another. What I have found, though, is
that people don't take us seriously because we're young, and
it is quite a legacy industry, Like there are these
you know, really deeply embedded pillars of the media, like
two of them who haven't been challenged for a really
(29:23):
long time. And so, you know, I always talk about
the fact that the first budget lock up we went into,
we were you know, called the TikTokers, and that sort
of idea is more where I've found challenging rather than
and like there's stuff with Sam about you know. I
think we're often asked different questions about our journey and
(29:45):
things that we reflect on, but I don't think that
our opportunities have differed at all, which I'm really grateful
for and really easy. Yeah, I think I feel really
proud of what we've done as a partnership and how
we've supported to each other through it all.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Oh, that's really positive.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
I'm so glad to hear that, but also interested about
the age thing because I would love to know if
you do have any tips for people in the situation
where they're underestimated, because I think for various reasons it
happens a lot.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, does that fuel your fire? Like I'm still talking
about it four years later, I have such a hang up.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
No.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
I think that it's to prove them wrong. Like prove
them wrong. They thought that we were a blip and
that we couldn't be taken seriously as a business in
this industry. And rather than tell them we can, we
showed them that we can. And I think, you know,
putting in the hard work to show with empirical evidence
that you are as important and have as much to
(30:47):
add as anyone else. I think that is so fundamental.
And you know, I often get asked by people, how
do we include young people in XYZ. I'm like, just
ask them, you just ask you know where they live
on the internet exactly, And there's so much you know,
people think that young people are this like enigma, and
(31:11):
so often it can help the business case to have
different perspectives and different voices. And I just think more
of that is absolutely a good thing. Yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
So then when you did get to that point of
wanting to grow aggressively and have that empirical evidence to
back you up versus before where you were like, I
don't know how as muchizer as I don't what was
the strategy around that you have eighteen staff now or
is it started as the two of you? How did
you learn how to sell advertising or how did you
work out your staff? And yeah, and knowing your data
(31:43):
and how to kind of leverage that, like what and
you mentioned a rebrand, Yeah that didn't work, Like how
do you learn from those experiences and know what over
the last four years what's worked and what hasn't.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Honestly, it's just what you said, it's learning from the mistakes.
So for like, I remember we we hired our first person, Tara,
who I'm obsessed with and has stayed with us this
whole time. And on day one we hired her and
we were like, okay, so can you make us money now?
And she was like how, We don't know. And I
(32:16):
distinctly remember we were sitting in an investor's office at
the time, because obviously we didn't have an office. How
does one get an office? And we just spoke to
as many people as we could about all the different
models there were for making money in media, and I
remember it was like the stupidest thing I've ever said.
Sam and I were doing a talk for the industry
(32:37):
and we got up and said, we will never do advertising.
We have a different model of making money. Like how obnoxious.
Like ninety percent of our revenue now is advertising. Mistake
learned from exactly, and I think so much in those
early days we were just forced out of necessity to learn.
(33:00):
And so you know, we had to launch a newsletter
because Instagram and Facebook took news off its platform one
day because they were having a fight with the government.
You haven't got about this. Just the first week of
going full time, it was really chilled that timing. Yeah, yeah,
me too. Sitting there, I was like, Okay, so investors
have just given us money for a project that like
(33:21):
possibly won't exist tomorrow. So that's really good. But that
forced our hand into diversification, and that was a really
important lesson that you cannot have a rented audience. You
need an owned audience that is not at the you know,
bequest exactly the algorithm, and so all of these lessons
that felt very difficult at the time have forced our
(33:44):
hand into building something that is very durable. We are
not reliant on one platform, we are not reliant on
revenue stream. You know, like all of these things are
so important, and I think it would be silly of
me to say that we sat down wrote a strategy
document to get here and now here. I didn't know
what a strategy document looked like. I remember the first
time we wrote a strategy I said to my mentors, so,
(34:06):
do you have a template, Like, where do.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
We can do?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
We all go genuinely wrote it into canva. I was like,
strategy documentary. Yeah, it probably came up with something. It
was your one from me exactly exactly. But it's like
I was so confused where we had all learned this,
and you know, reporting back to investors, it was like,
is there an email template? What do they want to know?
(34:29):
And we, you know, our first couple, I remember we
got responses saying I don't actually care about this much information,
like please say less, and I was like, okay, also
a recurring thing. All of these things have happened over time,
and we've learned from each milestone where to go. But
I think the one thing that hasn't changed is our
mission and what we intuitively know, which is we know
(34:51):
how to explain the news to young people. Everything else
has developed and professionalized, and that hasn't It is still
at the core of who we are. Yeah, and you
do it so well well we try to.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
So why would you rebrand? What was the name thing?
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Okay, So we came up with the idea for TDA
at a cafe. We came up with the colors and
everything that day, like immediately when we met each other,
and so I think I was like a year and
a maybe two years ago. Now we were like, all right,
this isn't very professional, Like we came up with everything
on primary colors fully primarys. Yeah, like hex COO don't
(35:28):
know her. So we decided to professionalize and do a
bit of a rebrand and so we changed yeah bitsleek.
We were like, we'll change the colors just a little bit,
we will change how the newsletter looks, will change the
jingle for the podcast. Little did I know that you
can't change au fond you will be in the court
(35:51):
of Instagram law. And we just I think we got
probably like fifteen thousand messages, and my funniest ones were
the people that said, how dare you do this without
asking us? Okay, you are beholden to the people, do you, investors? Yeah,
we are beholden to the people, which, you know, great
(36:11):
exercise in brand buildings. Cool. We've built something that people
feel deeply connected, they feel like they own it. That is, yes,
you know, unambiguously a good thing. We had to change
our font back, we had to change everything back. I
got like a mass retraction. All Now there are university
like modules studying our rebrand and what not to do.
(36:33):
Mildly traumatizing for me, but no worries. But again we
learned we spent too much money. But we learned, you know,
like so much of who we are is that we
speak across from our audience, not down to them. We
don't think we're better than them. We don't have this
like deeply sleek professional thing like Canva went down a
couple of weeks ago when we wrote our interest rate
(36:55):
update on notes apt and just posted.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
It and we all loved it and exactly this is
a trend now.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Throughout multi billion dollar company. But I think that all
of that goes to say that we need to maintain
that authenticity because that's what our audience comes for. They
can get the news from anywhere, but they come to be.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Wanted in that Fontabe and those colors.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
I'm never separate from you again.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
If anything, it was an incredibly brand affirming exercise. As
much as it felt like a sort of non success was.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
It absolutely was, and it like it haunts me in
my sleep, but it was great.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Now. Something else that you mentioned early on, in fact,
at the very beginning, was the challenge to your mental
health of being in a relentlessly never ending, non sleep
inducing the industry and news cycle, and obviously mental health
has been a big part of your family story, and
I think, particularly on a podcast that is about finding joy.
(38:02):
The flip side of that is that, particularly someone like
you who does look so outwardly successful and directed, and
you seem like the most well adjusted human, so intelligent
and so driven, it's the color, it's the font, But
you suffered immeasurable grief and a shock trauma at such
(38:25):
a young age, Like it actually blows my mind to
think that at just twenty eight you have achieved so
much coming from the age of sixteen, losing your father,
So how did you, at that crucial time of your
life find your way back? Like, as much as you're
comfortable telling you about that time.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
One of the words that I hear a lot is resilience,
and like, oh, you were so resilient, And to me,
there's just not another option, Like finding my way back
was the only option I had to go on sixteen,
As you said, I was about to finish my year
twelve exams, and my dad had instilled in us so
(39:08):
many core values, but you know, continuing to better ourselves
and better our education and all of these things like
that was really important to him. And like my love
of the news one hundred percent comes from my dad,
Like like I think back to my childhood and it's
just the ABC jingle twenty four to seven, like deep
(39:30):
inside my psyche. And so now if things feel challenging,
I do have that to keep me going. It's like, well,
he would be so proud, Like I know fully that
he would be so proud because we grew up in
a household that yelled at each other about politics and
the news from like the age of I don't know what,
(39:50):
and he was responsible for cultivating that sort of environment,
and so I think it's look, it has added a
lot of depth to who I am. I think that
it also allows me, though, to hopefully tell stories more sensitively.
I think that part of why we wanted to create
(40:12):
TDA was to tell the stories of young people and
tell them really meaningfully. And you know, just recently we
had the first openly bisexual player on Speak to TDA
and share his story, Mitch Brown, and what an incredible
human being he is. But being able to have created
an environment where we can have so much depth to
(40:33):
the conversations and the relationships that we create, I think
that is what I'm really proud of. And I think
that is what I can directly attribute to the very
difficult times at the age of sixteen. But it's interesting
because I don't remember so much of that time. It's Yeah,
I think it's just a trauma response that like, there
is a full year of my life that I just
(40:54):
like do not remember. And then I went back to
school and I just kept going, and then I went
straight to UNI, and then I went straight into the workforce,
and so there's never really been a moment of pause. Yeah,
but it's nice in this job, I think because I
get moments like this to reflect and to have that
opportunity to just stop and think about where I've be
(41:16):
and where I'm going and you know what comes.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Next, and that it's become a real legacy piece because
he has influenced so much of your passion for.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
What he's doing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
I just think about me at sixteen and how emotionally
immature I was at that age, and the forced growing
up and confronting a depth of emotion that now obviously
it shines through that that's sort of where it came from.
But that you were able to go on is so
extraordinary because I think it would have crushed most sixteen
(41:47):
year olds, and yet you have gone on to have
like not even a blip in the timeline of this
incredible career. That drive continued, that enthusiasm for life has continued.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, it is interesting to see how each of us
have My brothers and I have done it differently. Like
one of my brothers wrote a book about my dad
and our family. Another brother, Zach, you know, has now
dedicated his life to helping people so that other families
don't lose their dads in the way that we did.
And I just like that also is just really special
to me that like all of us are honoring him
(42:18):
in a different way, and mine is that I can't
get the ABC jingle out of my head.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
And you'll never change your jingles lesson less full set exactly.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
But I just think, you know, there's I grew up
really quickly, and it's a blessing and a curse to
have that. But I think that for where I am now,
having had that sort of life experience means that, yeah,
I can look at things differently, and I think that
that is probably a very good thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Oh, so you speak about it so beautifully and it
is I think incredibly encouraging for anyone who is perhaps
in the throes of grief right now. That of course
that never changes being part of your story, but it
becomes easy to speak about and to build a legacy on.
Do you find that it makes you more aware now
(43:08):
of looking after your mental health? And is that really
difficult in the context of what you do. Do you
have any time where you do switch off? Because part
of CZA is the joy that you have that's outside
your work. Yeah, and that was the news before you
made that your job. You replaced it with other forms
of kind of switching off.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Yeah, it's in the process. It's had to be a
very concerted effort because it's also on social media, so
I can't even you know, switch off from that. I
was really bad at prioritizing it and have gotten way
better and have been very successful now at creating boundaries
(43:50):
for myself and therapy and all of the good things.
And it took me a while to get here. Like
at the beginning, I thought this like sense of busyness
and having to always look busy and feel busy was
like the sign of success. And I'm coping and exactly,
I'm on top of everything. I'm juggling all of these
plates and in reality, I was juggling zero of the plane,
(44:10):
so they were all crashing around me. And now I
feel like I'm doing a much better job at it
and just taking the moments for me. You know, got
married last year, being able to feel really present there
and present with my partner. He's also building his own company,
so that's a fun household to be of two people, like,
(44:31):
oh my god, well, this job because tomorrow and finding
those pockets of joy are more important than anything, you know,
rediscovering content, not from a content brain has been something
important to me, like not reading stuff to you know,
speak about it better or talk about it on a podcast,
but just to be able to read something for the
(44:53):
sake of reading it. So had to turn away from
nonfiction for a really long time because I was like,
I just need fiction and just read. Finding that love
has been so important for me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Sorry, this is just a random question that doesn't logically
fit into the all of that at all, but.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
I've been thinking about it a lot.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
And one thing that really frustrates me sometimes is that
good news, which is like our page is all about
sharing good news stories, is so much harder to access,
so much less prolific, and just performs a lot less
because I don't know, humans just have this like intensity
towards tragedy and controversy. When you watch the metrics of
(45:32):
what goes well, do you find good news is getting more?
Speaker 1 (45:36):
I love this question so much so when we started,
a lot of people taught us I don't read the
news because it's too depressing. I was like, okay, noted,
I'm going to fix that, and so from day one
we've always had a good news story. It's the hardest
thing to find, but right always always the hardest thing
to find, like whoever is tasked with that on the day,
it's like, great is the indangered species. It's no longer endangered,
(46:02):
but it has been. One of the most gratifying parts
of it all is having that constant good news. And
so last year I launched a weekly good newsletter and
on a Sunday it's like the one piece of contient
that I still do. I, together with some of my team,
write a good newsletter that is filled with nothing but goodness,
(46:23):
nothing but good news, and so we friend it's just
the best and like it makes me go into the
week feeling better about the world. Like I wrote about
on Sunday, I wrote about a woman who for her
birthday she was a cancer survivor and she had gone
to the hospital where she had received treatment, stood outside
and paid for everyone's parking. And it's just those small
(46:44):
stories that you just like. In media, the common refrain
is if it bleeds, it leads. So if it's gore,
if it's crime, whatever it is, like, that's what leads,
that's what gets eyeballs. I'm like, no, we're not doing that.
We need to change the narrative again. It's this conditioning
audience want that because they've always gotten it, and like
our Good newsletter has fifty thousand subscribers, there are so
(47:05):
many people who want it, who desire that like goodness
in the world, and it's not celebrities doing crazy things.
It's just everyday people doing beautiful, beautiful, giving generous things.
And so I feel so strongly about good news that
it needs to be part of a media diet because
otherwise you turn away from it all and I understand why,
and again I want to stop that.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yeah, I'm so glad I remember that question because I
think about it all the time when I'm like, I
just am never going to compete with the actual like
intense news cycle because it doesn't have that shock. Fact, yeah,
good news doesn't have It has warmth, but it doesn't
have shock. And I love that. You're like, no, I'm
putting it in there anyway. Yeah, because it's important.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
It's important, and it's important for us as like fully
formed humans to know more about what is happening that
is good in the world and to highlight that humanity
is really good. It's really good, and we just don't
hear enough about it. Yeah. Oh yeah, well, Zara thank
you so much.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Congratulations on everything that you're doing, and I can't wait
to see you go from strength to strength in the
right colors and in the right fond.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Well, now that we're family, I mean thank you for
having me.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
It is such a funny world where you feel like
you know someone well before you meet them, even though
you've just followed each other online for a really long time.
But it's even lovelier when you do finally take that
relationship into the real world. Zara is so clever articular
doing such incredible work. I personally wouldn't be able to
keep up with the new cycle without TDA. And if
(48:37):
you enjoyed listening along, please do share the episode, tagging
Zara and us to keep growing the neighborhood as far
and wide as possible.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Every little bit counts.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
If you haven't seen, we have released tickets to our
first live show in so long with the incredible guest
Headley Thomas, raising funds for Safe Steps, and we've nearly.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Sold out already.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
I had no idea that was going to happen, but
I will pop the links in the show notes along
with more information, and in the meantime, I hope you're
having a wonderful week and seizing your yay
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