Breaking your own glass ceiling
Ever wondered what happens when you stop limiting your business dreams? Meet Mo and Pat from Greer Films, who transformed their business from a home-based side hustle into a thriving studio space in regional NSW.
In today's episode, they share their journey from Pat getting fired (best thing that ever happened) to building a professional studio. Plus, they open up about juggling three kids, multiple businesses, and why sometimes you need to stop calling yourself a 'family business' to break through your own glass ceiling.
Whether you're dreaming of expanding your business or just love a good 'universe made it happen' story, this episode is packed with real talk about taking risks, backing yourself, and creating the space (literally) for your business to grow.
Number of fucks given in this episode: 21
Mentioned in this episode:
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Episode transcript
Emily: Welcome to Fuck Around and find out a podcast for finding your way through owning your own business. I'm Emily. I'm Rah.
Mo: And I'm Chris. Hello,
Emily: welcome
Mo: and we're in a fancy studio today. Oh,
Chris: we a
Mo: lovely
Chris: And there was chaos. The most professional studio, um, than normally there is, you know, slightly less fucking around right now.
Absolutely.
Emily: It helps when you are interviewing people that are professional at what they do.
Mo: Mm, yeah. Who literally have a studio. Yes.
Emily: It's also quite refreshingly Nice. Welcome. We are in Greer Films in Bathurst with a lovely Moen Pan. Welcome. You our podcast
Mo: insert clapping. Yay.
Pat: There's there a button for that on this.
The button on the machine. No, I should do that. I've got a couple of them programmed.
Chris: Nothing like a good bit of canned laughter. Yes, exactly. You're
Emily: giving us momentous amount of jealousy in this space. Yeah. We only dreamed to have our own podcasting studio space. Yes.
Mo: It'll happen. It'll happen eventually.
It'll absolutely. Mm-hmm.
Emily: Eventually, yeah. Um, you're also our first married couple. Or couple even.
Mo: We exist. We exist on the podcast. So this is our new record. Most number of people on a single episode. It is actually, yeah, it is. I, yes. For
Chris: those listening there is. Five of us in case you need help counting.
Yep. And it really helps. We have enough
Mo: with
Chris: three of us,
Mo: but that's not enough. Now we want more, more chaos. Yes. More, more. Bring on
Emily: the chaos. It might increase the fuck
Pat: count.
Emily: You just, it really Would we have a fuck count every episode?
Pat: I, I'm excited to be able to just swear. Oh yeah.
Emily: They sometimes you get really unconscious conversation, so we find the conversation get really intense sometimes you're like, oh, I didn't swear at all.
Yeah. What
Mo: last week's step only had six. That was like a. That is pretty low. So no, no
Pat: hot dog from the biz going on then.
Mo: Yeah, you don't understand. You're gonna have to explain that to me.
Pat: Oh, um, track one or track two on Chocolate Starfish. Hot dog flavored water. Yeah. Oh, it's 46 Fox in this Fucked dog.
Very much there. Oh my God. That's amazing. This it's your thing. Yes. There you go. Got it. It's your new intro and outro. That song there. Yeah. So
Emily: many songs on that album. My
Mo: love. See, I only know that one song accidentally called from Chocolate Starfish. The band You're talking about the band, right?
Pat: Limp Bizkit Band.
Oh, limp Bizkit.
Mo: I put you too about Chocolate Starfish. Oh. 'cause there's the band
Emily: Chocolate Starfish. The You guys. No, no. Limp Bizkit got an album called Chocolate Starfish.
Mo: Oh,
Chris: I only know a Mission Impossible song, but this is so totally before the internet moment for me. Right. I, I have people of my age, but
Emily: this is great.
Enjoy. You've got watching TV and shit last night and I'm like, I got no idea what this is. I go to bed. What is terrestrial
Mo: tv? People watch TV still. Yeah.
Pat: Yeah, this, this hotel doesn't have Netflix plugged. Know it doesn't have, was it cast? Comcast maybe
Emily: could logged
Chris: in, but who could be bothered?
Emily: Yeah. Then people know your weird preferences when you see TV
Chris: and look, I love coming out to the country.
I really do. And coming out regional. But the tv, like I couldn't find channels, but I found life finally. It was 83, not 94. So I'd just get lost. Oh, it's different out here on regional tv. I just stream shit. It's first world problem. Dunno what it's, I think
Pat: ABC is the only channel I can remember 'cause it's 22.
Yeah. Yeah. Every other channel. I have no idea what it is. I
Chris: just, I just press the up program button. I just go through until I find it. Well, the TV
Pat: guide function, and if it doesn't have that, then you're just like, oh, game over.
Mo: Yeah. Yeah. Whereas I just load up, I view and just watch everything after the fact.
Pat: Mm-hmm.
Emily: I just don't even turn the TV on. I use my iPad on my, on my laptop. I'm like, I'm good. I don't need anything else.
Mo: Feel like I don't do that stuff.
Emily: Can we also shout out, you're our second male on our podcast as well, so you're, you're up there with the top five. Congrats. See it against estrogen over here.
Well, tell us about, um, Griffin grew your films and your journey to getting here.
Pat: Mm where, where to begin, I suppose.
Emily: Mm. Did you guys start it together as a couple or was it something you did separately first? Uh,
Pat: well I guess in a way we did. Um, obviously Mo was the one who sort of pushed for it to sort of, you know, happen.
And, and uh, and when, when we sort of got to a stage where people were like, well, what I do with my video after then I did what I did, which was where it was always just gonna be originally was just produce videos and there you go, Mr. Customer, there's your video. Yep. Um. It. Um, you know, it came evident to us that there was a gap, um, in the industry and people's knowledge and all that sort of stuff.
And so we were like, well, now we need to show our skills in social media and be able to be in a position to help these people actually utilize this is what you do with it. Yeah. So, um, that's when I sort of leaned on Emma and she, she sort of filled that stew and we both sort of. You know, for a long time there it was just the two of us and we were, we were doing all of it.
So, you know, scheduling posts and, and this is, you know, pre AI days, so
Emily: manual shit. Yeah,
Pat: yeah. A lot of manual copywriting and, um, um, a lot of research and understanding the clients and their, and their audience and that sort of stuff. So, um, but yeah, so ultimately, yeah, we did start it realistically together.
Um, it's, it's a bit of a funny origin story. Would you like to hear it? Please go for it. Okay, so
Mo: picture it. Sorry. No, that's a golden Girls reference.
Pat: Um, so ultimately, I guess it starts where, you know, where the journey of the career and, and employment sort of, you know, begins where I worked for Telstra for almost seven years in Telstra corporate land.
And that's sort of like where we met as well. Um, and then, you know, we, we, um, lived in Melbourne at the time. And I actually got made redundant, so I was like, woo, time to get outta this job. 'cause I was, I was just, you know, a, a numbless person sitting at a desk at the end of the day in that last, in that seventh year.
Yeah. So there was nothing really going on. I was running, um, a YouTube channel prior to that. Um, and did a little bit of it when I lived in Melbourne, but not a great deal, uh, which was called Metal Ignition. So that was a metal rock and alternative enthusiast based, um, uh, journalistic YouTube channel. So we eventually made the decision to leave Melbourne and decided to, you know, move to Bathurst.
That's where MO was from originally. And I couldn't get a job. In first instance it was quite difficult for me to get employed and I tried the Telstra offices again here 'cause I was like, oh well you know the devil, you know, why not? Let's just do that. Like I need a job, tick box and on. And it didn't, didn't really happen.
And then in the end, um, I worked at Devereux, which is the sausage skin case factory. Cool. Our neighbor was telling us how she's now just started working there. That was an interesting, you know, life of, it was a
Mo: real sausage fest, wasn't it?
Pat: Yeah. But, you know, standing over a machine, putting things in a box for eight hours and doing night shift and it wasn't for me.
Yeah. Um, so, and at the time, you know, they had the radio on all the time there and that's what sort of kept you entertained and, 'cause you couldn't unfortunately have your phone on you and play your own music and just work because that's against the rules. So there's this, um, you know, advertisement came, came on over the radio about, you know, working at B Rock.
So I was like, oh, I could maybe give that a shot that's. Back, at least back in the media world. So, and that's where ultimately I want to be that. So I went and got the job. So I was handed a fantastic portfolio and, and I tell everyone, uh, as part of the story that it's the worst job I've ever had in my life.
Hands down. Um, like in mornings before I would go to work, I couldn't even eat breakfast. I was just feeling Oh, a bad culture. Yeah. That, that bad about what my day was gonna be like.
Chris: We've all been there, which
Pat: is just horrible. Like, that's just not, that's not me. And it's not
Chris: sustainable. You cannot,
Emily: yeah.
There is nothing worth your mental health.
Mo: So, but then what the unfortunate circum, well, fortunate, unlike Yeah. Was our life was that we were, we had our first child, so Pat was at DE when we had John. Mm. And we were, which puts more pressure on her career. We were under six months in with John. So he was under six months old.
And I sort of said to Pat, like, I can't really work, so. Mm-hmm. Like, unfortunately, you need to stick it out unless they decide. Yeah, no longer. We obviously looked around for opportunities for him. We didn't just go, oh, well, that's it. You gotta be there until you die. But it was very hard seeing pat of a mourning.
F physically looking ill before he had to walk out that door to go to work.
Pat: Yeah. So, but, but basically, you know, it did give me a window opportunity where there was, you know, some, um, uh, uh, a person that worked there that, you know, put me for, 'cause she, you know, got an idea that I was good on camera and things like that.
And, um, sort of got me in the door for doing cancer council stuff. So I did like the relay for live video. Um, and then that's that segued to the, uh, dancing, um. It's not Dancing with the Stars, as everyone calls it stars, the stars of Bathurst Bath. So it's the same thing, you know, dance, dance for cancer. Um, and that's a great name.
Mo: Dance for cancer.
Pat: Yeah. And, and uh, Emma's parents, they, they won like a bootcamp at the CrossFit as a prize. So they won like, you know, a free whatever. It was a course of that. So they went to that for a few weeks and I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. Like, they don't wanna do that. I always wanted to do like a fitness style video.
I'll just go and I'll approach them and say. You know, can I, I'm this person, these guys are now in your class and I'd be interested in doing a video, you know, free of charge. So I did, I pumped out like some cool videos for them, just free of charge. Um, the first one I actually used like Captain American Winter Soldier, like score in the background.
And I found all these cool samples of like, you know, motivational speakers. So I think there was like Les Brown in there. There was, um, there's other, other, um. Guy at the time, I can't remember his name. Um, but I think I used like the Stallone speech and just different things like that. So I blended a lot together, so that was kind of cool.
But yeah, fast forward, obviously the job was horrible. Um, and I got fired as soon as I made, I made the sale on one afternoon, walked back, walked into the office, and I got let go. That wow. In that same half an hour.
Mo: Thanks. So I was like, wow, okay. What a rollercoaster.
Pat: But it was a blessing disguise. So she then walked out to the rest of the team, like the manager and said, you know, um, Pat's, you know.
Leaving us and he's gonna go pursue his video stuff. And I said, well, that's not true. But hey, am I, I will do that. Thank you. Yeah,
Mo: thanks. Thanks for the tip. Yeah. That night we drove to Orange and we watched
Pat: Carl Barron,
Mo: Carl Barron. So it was actually funny, man, like this huge roller coaster every day. But it was.
Perfect. It was exactly what we needed to do that night was just laugh it off. Yep. Yeah. And just have a really good time. 'cause we didn't take John, so we went just us. And it was lovely that we got to do that. And then we came home and we sat down the next day and went, right, what are we gonna do? Yeah.
And I sat down and worked out our figures and went, you've got six months to work out if your hobby, 'cause we had already named it Greer Films. Yeah. Because we had done a couple of those jobs as a pro bono, some fun stuff. But everything was a hobby side hustle. It was a hobby. It was a side hustle. That's right.
So we had actually already started it. But at that time we sat down and we went, right. We've got six months worth of budget to survive and really survive and out into the world. You went well, the universe laid that out nicely, didn't it? And you knocked on doors, lots of,
Pat: lots of cold phone calls. Oh, bit of cold
Mo: calling,
Pat: scurrying the internet, looking for local businesses, using Google Maps and Facebook, and finding recommendations of other businesses, and just like million tabs and lots of phone calls and yeah, so it was.
It's kind of funny thinking back on those days and, you know, just none of that has to happen anymore. So it's kind of, you know, it's an evolution of Yeah. Of hard work and how business grows, I suppose,
Mo: the new version of knocking on doors. Yeah,
Pat: that's true. Yeah. Correct. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Mo: Right. So there, there you go.
So then you came into the fold at some point as well. Yeah. So, and sorry, finish as mo I'm pointing at you. Yeah, sorry. So, so Mo Yeah, so I, I was very much. As Pat said, I was very much behind him. I was the cheerleader. I was the one doing invoices and booking his appointments and stuff like that. So I still are.
That's so true. Um, so I, I just tried to put us and Pat in a position where he could go do what he wanted, which was video, edit and do what the customer needed. And then that's right. The customer would say, I've got this great product, what do I do with it? And we would go, yeah, we can do social media. And we just had to.
Adapt, click on aime, adapt, learn, and do it. Pivot. Sorry, I have to quote Ross at any possibility. Yeah, and and a big part of that I believe, was that when we started in 2018, like few months in, it would've been about two or three months in, we started offering social media. That was huge in the cities.
Mm-hmm. It was massive for you guys. Yeah. It was huge down there to have social media managers and all those things. Yeah. But regionally, yeah. It's not as much of a thing. We were actually the start of that wave. Yeah. Sort of intentionally in the, and there were other people doing it. I'm not trying to take anyone else's shine in the city though.
Emily: You get a lot of people that are like,
Mo: I
Emily: can post on Instagram, I can do it. Yeah. And then start offering it and you'll find, like we talked earlier today about the VA world, which is where all three of us kind of were born from, and. Yeah. I will be honestly flat out, say we do not associate ourselves as VAs anymore and never will.
Pat: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Because you get everyone under the sun that goes, yeah, I can. I can start that. And there's courses out there that's like, become a VA and earn six figures and all this stupid shit that's just fucking stupid.
Pat: Yeah.
Emily: And the amount of them that go, yeah, I can offer social media. And it is when you get them, you're like, oh, you dunno what you're doing.
Pat: Yeah. You don't understand this. You know how
Emily: to post. We can do that part, but you actually don't.
Chris: I could take a photo of my lunch and share it around
Emily: the world. I'm
Chris: a content
Emily: creator and the world of content creation and you know, influencers has really fucked some stuff up in that sense as well because people are like, oh yeah, I can do it.
It's great, but it's snow. It's snow and everyone wants to go viral.
Mo: But you don't necessarily want to go viral anymore. Exactly.
Emily: Did, did you guys, did you have, like, did you go and do courses to learn how to do all the videography stuff or did you just fuck around and find out?
Pat: Um, just YouTube pretty much.
Yeah. Love fucking YouTube. Yeah. Learn on the tools and learn as you go and pick up new things and Fair enough. Just watch. Peter McKinnon was a huge one for me, so I would religiously watch Peter McKinnon not so much anymore, but, um, that's just my own time management. Yeah. Um, but yeah, pretty, pretty much anything that he was doing that, that sort of transition to what I would like to do.
Yeah. Um, in terms of style. So, uh, a lot of my style was mimicked from things that he would produce. Um, yeah. Not necessarily the talking to camera and tutorials and things, but like the actual cinematic shots and things like that and creativity and, and how he would edit stuff. So yeah, just self-taught a hundred percent.
And Emma used her sort of, um, diploma. Bachelor. Sorry, bachelor. I always gotta get that right. I always butcher that very
Mo: big distinction between the two, uneducated, educated, life educated account. Yeah, so I have a bachelor in design, but it's fashion design. Yeah. So I went to Canberra and I, that's why, so you can apply that
Emily: to a lot of different things.
A hundred
Mo: percent. So, and what I loved about the Canberra Institute of Technology over the fashion house in Sydney is that the institute taught us business skills. Yeah. They taught us how to apply it to a real world, not just design a pretty dress. Here's some pretty things. Good luck and there's nothing against.
Like what they do in Sydney or the other in Melbourne. But what I loved about was Canberra was that I, I didn't know if I actually wanted to go into fashion, but I knew that I wanted to be creative. Yeah. And I wanted to have an understanding beyond the real world of business. 'cause I grew up in a family business.
But it's very different and I'm glad that I did that. 'cause I wouldn't have known how to do a business plan or anything like that if I had have just stuck it with. The way my parents did it, and for them and their generation, they don't need one. And not that we need it, but it's a very handy tool to understand.
Yep. Yeah. So it gives you a floor plan so you can refer back to it. Yeah,
Pat: a hundred percent. That's right. 'cause I even did that training and that's how Lindsay came into our world. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was through the, and I can't even remember what it's called now. It's like one of those, um, business, um, business hq.
Business hq, yeah. So Business HQ is where I, I sort of then. Yeah, it started with within like my, I guess my business on paper sort of stuff. Yes, it's important. So I did that for a few days, uh, over a course of a month or two or however long it went for. And, uh, Lindsay Gale is his name, who facilitated a lot of that.
And, and then, um, he took us under his wing, um, to be just our ongoing sort of business mentor. Cool. Through them and then sort of continued that even when then he left. Um, so yes, and we to, we play squash with him now. We play soft. Yeah. So he used to, he used to run. Um, uh, called Music Store here.
Mo: Stock and Rock.
Yeah, I like that name. I let her say 'cause it's before my time because we were, and I lived here so it makes a big diff but, and Lindsay, like he was successful in business to the point that even my parents knew who he was and my parents never used to walk in there. But he had that reputation of being very smart with business.
So. It's a little bit like anything. You go to the Brains trust and go, do you know this person? Yep. And they go, yeah, that's a good person. And you go, oh shit, I'm gonna to on to them. And we're actually, yeah, really good friends. And we play squash and he always asks how we going? So yeah. Cool. It is lovely.
Emily: Good relation to have, but in terms
Pat: of the, um, I guess. You know, the evolution of, you know, social media, then video production, and then obviously then followed photography because obviously we needed to do photos for, for social media because people don't see, so originally I was like, I'm taking photos, I'm gonna be a videographer.
That's what I'm gonna do. But no, I then obviously had to, um, infuse photography as well, which, you know, is now a big passion of mine as well. Doing portraits and other creative photos and stuff. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Um. In the business to make people look good, is what I tell people. Thank you very much. That is great.
Appreciate it. Point. We have my
Emily: expectations of today.
Pat: The ones that don't look good, they just get deleted. And to see those
Emily: test, why you take so many of them who go back up to Yeah, that's right.
Pat: But um, yeah, so we went to um, which, you know, rest in peace, Ko and Ray, we went to his um,
Mo: oh, you went to Aker?
We went Toko and Ray. Nailed and yeah, the nail and scale of Wow. How long ago was that? Um, let's do the maths. Alice was six months old, so four years.
Pat: Yeah. Well it's, oh wow. Now four years.
Mo: Yep,
Pat: yep,
Mo: yep. Four years ago. Yeah. That was a huge shock. Yep. Do you guys know who is So Ker and Ray is kind of like a Gary Vayner chuck of sorts.
I know the name, but I know Gary V. Either dude. Okay. Whoa. Holy shit. Okay. We'll get you on Gary. It's content, content, content. Exactly. Everything. And attention. Flip it. Flip it. Yep. Flip it. Um, and not a social media platform anymore. It's attention media platform. Yeah. Cool. Gary V is very, very forward thinking when it comes to marketing.
Yeah. Okay. And he. Comes up with a lot of ideas that end up becoming the norm. Yeah, right. Within a few years. Yeah. Like streaming just his
Pat: office or something. Wasn't that one that he did on, on, um, dis not on Discord. What was it on? On, on one of the streaming gaming platforms.
Mo: Oh, Twitch. Probably Twitch.
Yeah. Tch.
Pat: Just Twitch like his office day. One day. Yeah. Right.
Mo: That sounds like just a
Pat: boring camera in the, in the background or something. Like that's, that's the video of going to
Mo: garage sales, working out how much things were and then flipping, working out how much he could sell them for on eBay. I am like, me too.
Okay. Um, but yeah, so Kerwin Ray, um, of a similar ilk of that kind of. Hmm. Motivational speak. I'm gonna get you. Like, he'll run massive events and people would, you know, go, oh, can't do this anymore. And then, okay, well I'm just gonna fucking get on with it. Like, and, and this, this is what you can do. And it was great.
Like he was a business coach. Like that's what he did. Yeah. But he, as he had kids that then had this parenting element to it as well. Mm-hmm. And he would start his seminar with like, if you don't fucking like it, there's the door. Yeah. 'cause this is who I am. And he would open it with some swearing and that intensity.
And we were there with Alice, like in a pram and everything, and everyone's like, it narrows down. He looked and asked me that, are you guys in the right place? And we're like, fuck yeah. So, so we went four years ago. Yeah. Wow. In Sydney. And Yeah. I never got around going. Friends of mine actually work for him, or now work for the remaining company.
'cause they're gonna, they've announced they're gonna, they still going keep his business going. Yeah. Without him. So he passed away beginning of the year. Gathered. Yeah. Um, very suddenly. And it was like, like the whole, everyone who had heard of him were just like. Fuck, fuck. Like huge hole. It was a massive loss.
Yeah. But our, um, our accountant actually only just went last week to the Gold Coast. Oh, of course. Yep. And he said it was like he was still there. Oh, that's good. So if you're going to Yeah. Okay. Go While it's still kinder, that legacy is there. Yeah. Because he wanted to build a business. That could last 500 years.
Wow. That was his, so he's proving it already. Correct. And, and AI and technology is allowing that to take place. But anyway, so we went with Alice and because of Covid, we originally were going to go when I was pregnant, so they then rang us and said, right. Postpone, we're having an October event. And I went, mm.
Oh, okay. Or November, I think it was. But then they ended up postponing that one as well and we were like, think, fuck. Yeah. So that was great. We went and we came back like we drove back the last night and they like 11 hour days. Yeah. Like we stayed up early. Early start to wait. Yep. Yep. Gives you homework, homework.
Yep. And we didn't finish our homework till three o'clock and Alice was stirring and I'm like, let's get some sleep before fucking waking. Don't make any noise. I mean,
Emily: that's intense without a child
Mo: in co-sleeping because we were like, we're not paying for a co. Like fuck that. Yeah, she'll be fine. Exactly. So on our drive back, so at the time we were, we had a home studio. We were running out of an office. Little bit smaller than the, well, the same square meter itch, but it was more of a rectangle. But this sort of space, this room, this, this, I think this one.
Four by three. Four by, yeah. Right. Okay. So the 12 squares you had at home. Yep. So that was the space that we were using. And it just became to a point where, 'cause we had the three kids, I could not switch off. Between work or home? Yeah, I'd be in the office and I'd be feeling it's too much feeling guilty for not doing home, or I'd be doing home stuff and then I'd be feeling guilty for not doing customer stuff.
Yeah, and we were working till one o'clock in the morning. You burned yourself out
Emily: so quick.
Mo: A hundred percent. And there was parts where we loved it. Because it meant by working silly hours, we were then present with our kids during the day. Yeah. Mm. So definitely had a, there's no time for sleeping in that period.
Yeah. Like you gotta sleep and reset at some point. I slept with Alice at times, or we just do a of sleep. You're dead. Yeah. On our drive back from Sydney on the last night, we then were like. We were just so pumped. I don't know how else to explain it. You're just so full. Don't worry. I go to
Emily: conferences and then I spend three hours talking to her on the phone on the way back, being like, you should have been there
Mo: with baby.
I'm so excited and I wanna do this, isn't it?
Emily: It fuels you.
Mo: Having a studio was our goal, so we worked out that we were putting a bit of a glass ceiling on us being a family business. Yeah. Yeah. So we were actually making ourselves a little bit small. Yes. So we would never ask for the bigger dollar sign.
We would never think that we are of that value because we were just running from home. Right. Like so, and it was no
Pat: longer a selling point to say that you're a family. Family. No, we weren't allowed to use that. It's so that's why we're like, well, okay. Ah. How do we shift things? Shift as well. Then how do we shift?
'cause
Mo: that becomes a limiting belief type,
Emily: which is honestly the same thing we faced with the concept of a va. Mm-hmm. It is very limiting and it makes people go, oh, you're that little AI assistant, like virtual
Pat: bubble
Emily: email. Or they immediately think that we're in the Philippines. Yes.
Mo: So, so yeah, we wanted to have a studio.
Yeah. And then it was, well how big do we want the studio? What's the studio going to service? And this place. Just sort of evolved from that. We were very close to signing a lease in Main Street. So in Williams Street. Yep. Um, and it would've been an office space, I think it was about 60 or 80 square meters.
Yeah. Approximately. And we were gonna make our, so same thing, make ourselves fit the space. Yeah. Until we got a surprising phone call and someone had heard of our story and was like. If you had this much, what would you purchase? And we were like, well, a huge fuck off space. Yeah. That we can make our own.
Pat: Mm-hmm.
Mo: And we cyclorama throw. Yep. Cyclorama. We want this. We want it to be hireable for anyone who wants to. Yep, yep. And at the time our kids were going to the daycare next door.
Emily: I did notice that as we drove off. And
Mo: I was like, well, that's convenient. So we drove past this when it was for sale and when it was underway, and we went.
That's it. That's what we fucking want. We want that front glass one. We want to be at the front. We want it to be big. And we rang that person and or people and said that's what we would do. Yep. If, if you said to us, what? What is our dream? That's it. They then rang Auraura and this was the last building for sale.
Wow. Whoa. I've got goosebumps from that. Yeah. Yep. So universe just brought all together, um, we obviously leased through our wonderful investors slash landlord. Yep. Who trusted our vision. That's awesome. And it's a, you know, everything is above board, everything's legal, but it is one of these handshake we are never leaving.
Yeah, so we painted it the mezzanine we invested in ourselves. So everyone sold was just big open space. It was just a space. Wow. Had brand new build. You can, yeah. Literally canvas, blank canvas, blank canvas. That's awesome. That's so cool. So it's really cool for the people who haven't been here, which included me until today.
Yes. That's So it's effectively sort of a warehouse space downstairs is, well, there's tables, which is where we went to a network meeting with you guys this morning. But there's also the cyclorama, which I believe is the bit, that means it's like a photo wall, but it's wall, the curved, bit curved, so you can't see the line at the bottom.
Pat: Yep. Or infinity wall. It's also known as network. Okay.
Mo: Yeah. So at the time when we did ours, we were one of the first. Professional, horrible ones in this area. Amazing. Yeah. At that time, don't get me wrong, there are now other people've done the same thing. Of course. But you were the first. You were first, but we were one of the first.
Yeah. I'd like to say one off. Okay. One off. Just in case. I don't have my facts completely correct. You don't? Yeah. Just to be safe. I think in terms of per,
Pat: like in terms of like, you know, like sole entrepreneurs or whatever, we would be the one and only. Mm-hmm. Because you're talking the likes of like universities here that then went and did it.
So you can't, you can't put yourselves up against that. They're different category.
Mo: So in our um, first episode of Caffeine, creative Caffeine, creative
Pat: Caffeine and Creative, are
Emily: we forgetting the name of your podcast already?
Pat: That's creative. We changed to Creative, not Creativity. Yeah, yeah, right. Just short.
But
Mo: we mentioned in that one about how. We still have aspirations to still improve these spaces, of course, because of course, it's always a
Emily: work in progress, so you're never gonna be finished. You never, yeah, I don't know. Never finished. Right. Don't feel like when it's
Mo: not
Emily: finished. Well, I, yeah.
Mo: And so you guys have been in here now for a couple of years.
Then, yeah,
Pat: three years going, going on four years at the end of the year.
Mo: So with the moving into the space, removing your glass ceiling thing, has it actually made that much of a difference? Like have you seen that growth?
Pat: Well, I guess, um, and it's interesting was point your face conversation yesterday was in the, in the, in the initial sort of change, uh, it allowed us to leave work where work is more.
Yeah. That's the main sort of shift in mindset of for us is I don't get wrong, we still do do it and this one's very guilty of it at the moment, but that's just.
Mo: That's normal,
Pat: adding more workload to things, so then you kind of have to do it. But me, me especially, um, I've, and more so in the last probably 12 months, I've, I've really just been leaving, leaving work here and just
Emily: being able to be home.
Just be home
Pat: and be present. I might do some photo editing or, but there was lots of times, but its choice. We were coming back late at night and be like, I gotta gotta do some more wedding back to the studio. It's peak season. Kids going, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's sort of like the main sort of. Benefit of them having a space, I suppose, rather than working at home.
Mm. And yeah, obviously I think another huge benefit of a space that I was probably most excited for was. Yeah. Having a dedicated area that I could always take photos in or could always shoot in. Yeah. Um, that was a key sort of, um, goal for us when we were like, let's do a studio. And I was like, oh, that means I can do all this and we'll have a space and it's controlled and et cetera.
Um, and then being able to house things like Yeah. All the equipment, for example, like you're saying. So.
Emily: Well, you've also, I'm just gonna go to MSG coaching now a little bit there 'cause that's happening. So what do, how do you guys find the juggle with each other, with the different demands that come above?
Like, I know there's a lot of travel going on for you both and I know even from my own experience is not easy juggling kids and traveling when both of you have got shit to do. Like, how do you also find working together as a couple? 'cause I've been there, I've done that with my husband and I'll never do it again.
Pat: Well, generally I looked at, I looked at this one 99% of the time when I, when something comes up that needs to be looked at for a calendar, um, yeah, that's pretty standard for a husband. It's pretty, pretty easy for me to do that. Um, so I'll let you, I'll let you answer this question more, more than me really,
Mo: I think.
I think we talk about support. Um, there is no way I could do MSG or hockey coaching or networking if I didn't have the support of Pat. Yeah. Um, he really steps up like when I drive down to you guys and have to leave at quarter past six in the morning Mm. When I leave, I know that he's got kids while dedicated.
It's true partnership and I think that that is a testament not just to our business, but to our relationship. And we've always seen our relationship. When we were just boyfriend girlfriend as a partnership. Woo. Always makes wanna do that whenever hears about boyfriend, girlfriend sounds so high school.
Adorable. So very like we always saw each other as equals. Yeah. Well equals But also I'm his shoulder. He's got mine. Yeah. We've got each other's backs. You're a team And we are a team. Yeah, a hundred percent. And to the point that we teach our kids. That family is a team. It's a team sport. Everyone has to turn up.
Everyone has to do their shit. Yeah. Um, so I was about to say there's no I in family, but there is very me. There's no, there's no me in family. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. Great. Thank you. That's right. Good stuff works. So, um. Here I, I don't know how you feel about MSG, but for me it's just a chance for me to play in a space that I'm very good at.
Yeah, you are. You are. In a way that Greer films, I was able to do it to a, to an extent. Mm. Because it muddied, once we started trying to offer that as a service, it just muddied,
Emily: it changed your offering altogether. Right. And people got really confused about what the fuck we
Mo: do. And it's like, well, if we just separate them under two different umbrellas.
Because ultimately that doesn't change what we are doing. No. This is how you communicate it. Yeah. Mm. Yeah. And like what I do as MSG. Is me. Um, and then it's like, oh, well rah, you know, you've enjoyed this content discussion we've had. Oh, we offer social media management over here at Career films. Yeah. So
Emily: tell everyone who's listening in this hypothetical land that no one's currently listening, but what is it?
What is MSG?
Mo: Oh, coaching. That's, this is what I've gotta define, isn't it? We talked about this earlier. It always makes me
Emily: laugh and I love it when other people can't do it. 'cause every time it gets to us, I'm like, oh, we make people's lives easier. Or I'm like, Chris answering.
Pat: I'm like, I know that's, that's ker and Ray training right there.
Mo: Yeah. And, and, and I think because I, I nail g career films. Like, you guys heard me talk about it this morning. Like, I nail it. It. We are video, we are marketing. We let you tell your story to your audience in the way that you want to tell it on your platform. Right. Well I straight away that just paints a picture.
Emily: But you've ex, you've described it a couple of times to me in the last week. 'cause I happen to be in your audience. For you, you used cheerleader a lot and I think that is cheerleader is probably a great description of what you do. Yes. And it, and I think
Mo: that's because I'm very mindful of using the word coaching.
Yes. Yes. We have business coaches, we have life coaches around. It's, it's in the business
Pat: name.
Emily: It's also one of those things where people sometimes, yeah,
Mo: we don't use it otherwise be like, I'm a life coach guys. But I mean, I don't want it to be defining the, the, the defining word. Yeah. Hence why I said this morning.
It's like, oh, if you need a cheerleader or a guide, I mean, SG coaching sounds better than m sg.
Emily: Cheerleading.
Mo: Yeah, vibe. Be aggressive. Be aggressive. Honestly, you could honestly use anything from bring it on, it will be right. Hundred percent convert to your market greatest ever. So, so yeah, that's sort of, and I'm in the process of doing the things that we do for our customers, which is define your values.
Define this. So it's easier to, what is MSG? Well, it's this, so would I be right in saying
Emily: that you are basically acting as a sounding board for people who are lost and lacking direction and strategy in their business. Yeah. Right. So that you can help them clarify their Any from anything from Yep. What they actually were goals in their businesses or anything that they're a bit lost on.
Mo: Yeah. So what I've done is. Um, and it's like anything, it's like a baby business 'cause it's, it's under so many months old. So it's writing still good that pay that space of paying its dues and doing the work to build case studies. But I've run strategic forums for a day, um, to get people on the same page so they can make decisions and stuff like that.
Um, I've just had someone reach out and say, oh, we don't have any values or, uh, vision statement or mission statement. Can you do that? It's like, oh, absolutely. I can come in and do a forum for you or. A planning day, whatever that looks like. And it comes down to how many people are involved. Yes. And how many people they want to have a voice.
Yes. But yes, it's just about defining what you are feeling lost on. So if that's a strategic plan or your marketing what you want out of it. Yeah, it's. I can have all that pre-discussion. 'cause you guys know what it's like when someone comes to you and you go, oh, do you have this? And they go, no. And you go, oh
Chris: fuck yeah.
Right? Like now we've gotta
Mo: dig through that and work them through it or like, let, start with me creatively that gap. For all US marketing businesses and you're, you're putting business,
Pat: you're putting the tools in the toolbox.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Quote that shit. Yes. This guy,
Mo: and you're marking it out on the wall so they know exactly what peg to put that particular span in.
Oh yeah. Or you make Keita drill or whatever.
Emily: I'm loving how you're writing that analogy. So are you focusing on people and marketing, or are you focusing on all businesses? All businesses,
Mo: yeah. Okay.
Emily: With a marketing focus. Not always.
Mo: No, not always. Mm-hmm. And even organizations. So the one that I did the strategic forum for was a hockey association.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah.
Mo: Because they're just like, we need to turn up. Yeah. We need to. And I was like, hockey New South Wales is not gonna turn up and save you.
Emily: Yeah.
Mo: You have to do it selves. And they all just went, this is so true. Mm. Mm-hmm. And it's like, well, if you guys wanna be leaders, this is how you lead. Yeah. So it was very much a day of.
F driving them, letting them have chance to speak. But the feedback that I got from them was, it really fueled me to actually do MSG.
Emily: Please tell me you got a lot of that in written form that you can use for FO later. Yes. Yes. Good. Yes, a
Pat: hundred percent.
Mo: So, yeah, so it's been really exciting and um. Fun.
Yeah. Yeah. Good. I guess is the way to fun is important to explore. Explore it. It's the joy part of it. I'm enjoying it. Yeah. Yeah. My problem is time, but, and then I go, I need you to do this.
The other job. Other job or hockey or coaching or, so, and, and the reason that we called it MSG coaching was that. I'm developing different things for hockey coaching. Yeah. So different, um, stat sheets and stuff like that, and defensive court, like just plays. But I actually want to trademark half of this.
Yeah, yeah. Because it's very quick that it goes online and it just goes, so I might not, I want to protect some of the stuff. Yeah. A copyright is not enough for some of that stuff. No, no. But at least if a state goes, Hey, we really like this sheet. I just want the acknowledgement. Yeah. But half of it is just an acknowledgement that get your logos out from you.
Yeah. Get
Emily: your branding everywhere. Yeah. Oh yeah. Watermark that shit. Very smart, very important. Yeah. Right in the middle. Yeah. Where everyone can see it. Yes.
Mo: It's like how I encourage this one to do watermarks on photos that you would've seen on website. Yeah. Yeah. Important. They're really important.
What's nice that our watermark is still there. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, yeah,
Emily: absolutely. Uhhuh. Well, uh, where can our lovely viewers find you? Viewers like they're watching us. Listeners. Yes. Yes. Mostly listeners. And shout
Mo: out to Mo our one watcher. You're that YouTube subscriber. I so him. I was like, how many C times Can I go on?
Yeah. We have so many, uh, so they can find us on YouTube. They can find us on website. Facebook, Instagram, we'll
Emily: link it all.
Pat: Yeah. Just career films.
Mo: Okay. Yes. So thank you for having us, hosting us in, and bringing us in this little studio Blue Room Studio. Loved it.
Chris: Pleasure. Yep. Lily, I've got one question for you.
So the kids are not in the equation? Work's not in the equation. Yeah, it doesn't matter where you don't care. It's a picture together. It's a day off. What is your ideal day off? And it can be collectively or separately.
Pat: Ideal day off.
Chris: Ideal day off. How would you spend your ideal day off when?
Pat: Mm.
Chris: I'm really big.
No children. No, nobody and nothing to worry about.
Pat: Mm.
Chris: I It's a feeling yours will involve music of some kind.
Pat: Yeah. Yeah. I, I would say it would involve the beach and it would involve some live music. Yep. And, um, lots of ginger beer.
Mo: Ooh, awesome. I think alcoholic or Or straight. Alcoholic one. Yeah. Alcoholic.
Do you brew? Yeah. A favorite one. Do you brew? No, we don't have time for them. Propel. Yep. Cool. Yeah. Nice. Yep. Okay. I'll have lot to Jack. Yeah. Yeah. Jack and Cokes. Yeah. But for us, I think, oh, that's my drink. You said jets. I'm like, yeah, I love jets. Awesome Jet's an awesome cracker. Um, I think for us the ideal is that something like that where we can just explore and take our time.
Yeah. We are not needing to be someone Yes. Not needing to meet a deadline. Um, as much as I am sport fanatic, crazy person. Yeah. You prob your
Pat: ideal. Dave. Probably just playing hockey all day or something. I'm playing a sport,
Mo: but, but as much as that is, I think it's just. Ultimately spending time with people or someone I love.
So if it's an opportunity that we can be together, that's perfect. If it's me going and playing sport and being around other like-minded people, I'm pretty happy with that as well.
Pat: Yeah, lovely.
Emily: Thank
Pat: you.
Emily: Well, thank
Chris: you guys. Thanks. Thank you
Mo: for having us at hosting us here as well for bringing your equipment.
Chris: Thank you for the GR Films podcast studio hosting yesterday.
Mo: Love. You can come back anytime.
Emily: Yeah. Tell us actually, what are your podcast. That other people can go and listen to.
Mo: So at the moment we've got caffeine creative for GR films. Yes. And then MSG is ma in the making. Thank you.
