If you position yourself in your own mind as businesses ideas are just problem solving activities, then it's about you know, I'm actually I found an opportunity and there's something here that I think I can do a creative spin on. I can solve this problem. And here we've got now at the end of the Olympics, in a private anger for honors, the athletes coming out of the plane in their uniform with their metals on, carrying a July suitcase down the stairs, meeting the Prime Minister.
Welcome to the seas 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 will bear all the facets of seizing your yay. I'm Sarah Davidson or a spoonful of Sarah, a lawyer turned fu entrepreneur who's walked the suits and heels to copo, matcha maiden and matcha milk bar. Cca is a series of conversations on finding a life you love and exploring the self doubt, challenge,
joy and fulfillment along the way. Hello, lovely neighborhood, We are back with another incredible guest whose brand you will likely know and love, but whose backstory you may know less about, which you, guys know is my favorite thing to share with you. If you follow me on socials, especially as we just came back from a big trip, you'll know we are big fans of July luggage in
our household. I mean, the specs are insane, a unique polycarbonet hardshell, the silent move three sixty spinner wheels, quality so high they come with a lifetime warranty. I just never thought I would have the feelings that I have about my luggage at the moment, which is part of
the beauty of the brand. But do you know the fellow Melbournian co founder and quite the unexpected way that he ended up, as he humbly puts it, selling suitcases on the internet, Ethan do Daskaloosta off of all places, in a humble chucoal chicken shop, which he actually ended up going on to buy before stopping off along his way you guys. No, I love the dot points that connect in the realm of co working and then coffee sales and even considering Shelac now kids. Before July was
born in twenty eighteen. And despite the enormous success you'll have seen July experience in the past few years, growing into a multi million dollar company recognized.
All around the world.
I cannot tell you how I beamed with pride every time I saw a July suitcase in the airports. He has equally lived through losing ninety five percent of sales when travel came to a halt in the last few years, but Ethan has survived and thrived to tell the tale. So this is just such a fascinating story. Other fun facts along the way, Athan met his business partner, Richard Lee in a cafe. How very Melbourne of them, and Richard actually previously founded Brossa Furniture, another brand that you
may all have heard of before. He is also married to the CEO of the incredible Rationale Skincare. Oh my gosh, there is so much to unpack in this episode, and my sleep deprived mum brain missed half of what I wanted to ask. I could have spoken to Ethan for hours and hours and hours and just tapped into so many different parts of his brain. But we did still cover so much interesting ground and I hope you guys all enjoyed this one as much as I did.
Athan, Welcome to CZA.
Thanks for having me, sir. This is cool.
We're live and we are so grateful to have you. I know you are squeezing this in between two trips and just got back from the Paris Olympics. You are absolutely smashing life, so we are so grateful for your time.
Well, you know everyone's busy, right, life is busy, and you know you just got to keep going, keep having keep having some.
Phone one hundred percent.
Well, you are someone whose journey I've followed for many years now as a fellow Melbournian, and you're really the epitome of our fascination at CZA with the non conventional pathway. And I read that you never imagined you'd end up as a traveling luggage salesman of all things. And we'll get into how July almost became a sha lac now
kid business even it's sex toy business. But I mean, thank goodness it didn't because it worked out for the best, huge congratulations on all your incredible success.
Thank you, thank you very much, and as mentioned before, right back at you as well. Right the nonlinear pathway say anything, it's a beautiful thing that you know in yourself you can you can jump to another category, jump and do other things as long as you're finding your purpose, your passions, mastering and a little bit of a little bit of fun along the way. Why not, right, sexys would have been fun to I guess.
I mean, I also read that one of the reasons you didn't do that was because you found it hard to differentiate between competitors, and I thought, I, I'm not going to I'm not going.
To go there because I feel like that could get very technical.
That's not for today's conversation. But I feel like the people who are doing the sex toys at the moment are the right people to be doing that, you know, Liz Rage, all the people who are doing them currently, they're doing a fantastic job at it. And I had personally been enjoying the content series that goes with it. So that's something that's not in a dirty way, but just in a fun like. Oh, I didn't really know that that was a thing that's a cool thing to know.
Well, as it turned out, July is exactly what you were meant to do and you are absolutely smashing it. And you know, I'm a big lover of quotes, and something that's kind of across all of your accounts is the idea that you're born with thirty thousand days to live and the best strategic planning that you can give is to think about that. But I think what often comes with that is you want to make the most of your life and you want to seize every opportunity.
And you know sees the a since we're on this show, But sometimes that pressure for people is really overwhelming, Like they finished school, if they don't know what they want to do at school, or they don't know what they want to do at UNI or who they want to become, they kind of feel lost. It's really there's a lot of pressure to find your joy and get there really fast. So I like to take a bit of the pressure off and remind people that everyone started somewhere and most people had no idea when.
They'd end up.
So going all the way back to young Athan, like what you thought you'd be when you were a kid, and what your first part time job was, and you know what your hopes and dreams were at the very beginning to kind of trace back where all the dots started to connect. So what were you like when you were younger?
I mean, you know, we we we're going back, right, that's a we're going back to the beginning. I look early days, young Ehan always wanted to be a scientist or rock. I was collecting rocks. I had my own little microscope kids, and I was very nerdy, very sort of germy kind of guy. Just you know, I really I really enjoyed that kind of I had my stamp collection.
I was very big into collecting stamps, and you used to be able to order like the ripoffs of the envelopes in bags, and I would sit there and soak the envelopes and peel the stamps off the glue and slowly start to dry them. And I was I was a weird kid.
You're a weird unit.
And very I would say, very introverted for almost to a degree, the opposite of the individual I am now. But I was a very intruded kids. Sport was never really my thing, and I was a rock collection, stamp collections, you know, you're starting to get a taste for it. My dad in particularly was a little bit worried about me. He's like his kid's he's not engaging as he would have thought as a Greek man who's come to Australia, gone, you know, I want him to go and play soccer
and do this and do that. If I reflect, he's probably going, you know, something's up with this kid. And he actually got me my first job when I was fourteen, so I was nine months early than what the legal age limit was, and he put me into a chucolate chicken chop down on Station Street in Fairfield because he knew the guy. And I used because I was underage. I used to just get paid in the leftover food and so I was, you know, I was young. I
was the dishwasher. They didn't even have an apron for me, so they used to cut the holes in the garbage bags and I would just wear the game shot the apron. Humble beginnings exactly, super humble, super funny as well. They were a great bunch of blokes, and I think my dad's whole intentions that like there's a young fun it's a young fun crew. You will hopefully break Ethan out of his shell, and I ended up I stayed in that business throughout most of I would say most of
high school because they were just a good crew. I learned a lot, to the point where I ended up opening up my own chocolate chicken chop after year twelve.
Stop it.
Yeah, yeah, it was the most you're talking about, like nonlinear pathways. Everyone else went to UNI. They were having a lot of fun doing their twenty contact hours a week, getting as drunk as possible, and I was stuck in the middle of nowhere with a chocolate chicken chop that I thought would be a good idea to start and I could run this thing. And I did it for a year, and it was the worst year of my life. I would say I learned so many life lessons within
that one year. We sold that business. I think I didn't get paid wages, but I ended up making around forty or fifty grands at the end when we sold, and so that's like a year's worth of work. You end up, you know, fifty grand up front when you're eighteen nineteen. It was a lot of cash. And then went to Europe to Eurotrip straight after that with a couple of friends and I ran back to university. After that.
That was like I had enough of that world, great life lessons, but did not ever want to do no one ever do everything. So that was like the beginning of I think. I thought, you know, year twelve academia studying wasn't for me. Tried my hand at starting a business, and you know, I would say successful to a degree, didn't. I didn't definitely lose lose money of it, but definitely won't be doing that ever again.
Charcoal Chicken was not your future.
No, No, definitely not. It's just a lot of it's a lot of work. I have a lot of love for the hospitality industry, particular businesses that run on seven days a week, you know, like seven to sevens and whatnot. It's crazy. It's a lot of hours. So it's harder than I think. It's only got harder for a lot of people. Yeah. So then after union, just did marketing and business and grew there. I've met met some cool people and you know the rest. I mean, I've done
quite a few things in between all that. But that quote that you referenced is somebody else's quote. And I can never poor guy, I can never remember the name of the guy. I'm sure it's a couple of quick so I put it in quotation marks whenever I quote it to say that it's kind of not mine. But at the same time, I don't blow you do the effort to get the name right, but I believe in it.
And if you do the math on it, you know, it's like basically thirty year blocks of ten thousand, ten thousand, ten thousand, and you know, the first ten thousand days is you figuring yourself out. The last ten thousand days you're sixty plus and you kind of want to be winding down and you know, grandkids and all those other
retirement and traveling and doing other fun things. So you've really only got ten thousand days to go from thirty to sixty, to get a family, to make some money, to tick off all the things that you want to be doing, which ten thousand days not a lot of time, man, Like, how much time do you waste? Just like scroll just so you know, my whole thing is like, I've only
got ten thousand days. I wouldn't call it about season the ya, I'd call it I'm freaking out a little bit, and I'm running out of time.
Yeah, I mean, whichever way you spin it, I think we all need that reminder that you take of all the things we take for granted.
It's like obviously time.
I think we all assume that we have time to do all the things that we want to do, and that tomorrow's guaranteed, and in such a it's sort of such a glass half empty way to look at things. But at the same time, it's optimistic because then it encourages you to use those days to the max and to the you know, live up to your potential. I'd say, like for even for you, right, when when did you start Matching Maiden twenty fourteen?
Yeah, twenty fourteen, twenty.
Fourteen, so we're ten years now. That's around three thousand days. You will tell me, wow, right, and see what you can get done in something that feels like a really short amount of Ten years is a long time. Three thousand days not that long. So it's crazy. It's crazy. There's so much to do, there's so much to do, and I feel like we waste a lot of it. I feel like I waste a lot of it.
It's funny that you said waste time, because I think that's something else that comes up a lot when you really dissect people's pathways and people who don't know where they want to end up or what they want to do.
Look at people like you who have found their purpose, who have an incredible business, who have so much objective and subjective success, and like it just looks like you woke up one day and you did the lemonade stand thing as a kid, and then you knew you were going to be a luggage person, and you spent your whole life preparing for this moment, and now you're living in Anybody.
Who's worked with me who's listening to this will probably laugh at that and know that that's definitely not true. I mean, I started a soup business when I was working in advertising. I started a soup business to sell soup to people for lunch. One week of that, I knew I was definitely not doing that again. I've done a coffee business where we sell coffee beans online. Yes, that worked, but there were ten other ideas between all
that that didn't sort of work. And I think if you position yourself in your own mind and as businesses, ideas are just problem solving activities and going I just want to try that I want to challenge that. Then the category doesn't really matter. Then it's not about being a suit case salesman or a match a maiden. It's about you know, I'm actually I found an opportunity and there's something here that I think I can do a
creative spin on. I can solve this problem. Let me give it a shove in my own way, and then it's fun. And then it's about you, and then it's about giving it a crack. You're not putting any pressure on.
Yourself, and I love that because I think coming back to the wasting time thing, I think a lot of people assume that if you're not in the chapter that you ultimately end up in, or if you're not in your yay chapter like your I found my joy, I'm living my passion, they think it's a waste of time, Whereas I kind of take the opinion that, yes, you only have thirty thousand days, But if you're in a chapter that you're learning something from, like all the businesses
that you did that didn't stick or that might have you know, kind of objectively been a failure or that you ended up not liking, none of those were a waste. Like sure, they didn't end up being here forever.
Thing.
But I feel like the waste of time is when you're not trying, or the waste of time is when you're just sitting and doing the same thing all day, every day and existing. So many people exist on this productivity hamster will. They're not exploring different ideas and trying to see what fits and see what doesn't. But I love that it did take you so many tries.
I say what I love I related to traffic and that sometimes when you're stuck in traffic, even if you turn down the side street, it might take you twice as long, but at least you're moving and you're driving, and you feel like you're progressing. That to me is what starting things and doing things. And you don't always have to start a business, but it can be entrepreneurship.
It can be doing something new within the business. As long as you feel like you're moving and trying something new, one opportunity will lead to another, will lead to another, and we will lead to another. The coffee business, I started a online coffee distribution business while I was working full time in advertising, and that business was the re I didn't make a lot of money from that business, but it was the reason I met everybody I know
today that I still work with. And so it's that business then turned into something else, then turned into something else, that met my co founder here, that started the idea for we should do something with July. So to say that July was the beginning is it's the result of a decision that I made thirteen years earlier.
You never know that that's around the corner. Like, you just kept going.
You just kept putting one foot in front of the other and positioning yourself right until the right idea.
Kind of came around.
And I think one of the things that's really interesting about July is that the advice that you get so often in business is I saw a gap in the market. I was the ideal consumer, and I wanted to close the gap for myself. And that was very much what happened with matcha Maiden. It's a cliche for a reason. It's because that's kind of how a lot of people
stumble upon their business idea. What I love about you, guys, is that you weren't sort of the eternal in the eternal search for the ideal suitcase, and then you found all the reasons. You two bonded in a cafe over the reasons you didn't like luggage, and then you fixed it together. I like that you were actually searching for a business idea, Like people say, you can't reverse engineer it that way, but you obviously did and it worked, and so I love that. It's not the way people
would expect that it happened. So how did you, guys, Well, firstly, you met in a cafe, But how did you reverse engineer an idea for a business without it being because you fell into it?
If it really happens like that, sure that it's a great story. But I hate this. There was a dto c era that everybody just made up these simplified stories. You know, I fell at the airport and he picked up my suitcase, then we kissed, then we started list It's so American. It's so this like pretend vibe of how you start things. The biggest thing is that Richard is, in particular with July, rich is the complete opposite to me in one way, very sort of supply chain driven,
that the numbers guy, extremely smart individual. We would connect over different things and we just enjoyed each other's company in respect to how we would tackle our own business problems in our individual businesses. Prior, I didn't have a lot of money, so my ways all organic marketing. It is a way of growing the business without paying for advertising. I had a big subscriber base, it was growing significantly, but I didn't use any money in marketing. That fascinated Ridge.
And on the other side, I'm like, I just don't know how to scale these things. I'm so used to handtouching everything. I don't know how to go from this to this and still be saying and do it in a way that I can support it without raising any capital.
So we would just connect on all these things. It's a beautiful thing because, as you know, you're having coffee with so many different people, and then some people you actually enjoy having coffee more often than others, and you naturally just go to a from a once every six months to once a month or once a fortnite cycle because you enjoy the company and were hanging out and
chatting with them. So that's what happened with Rich and I. We just enjoyed each other's company, enjoyed learning about other things from each other, and we were just constantly talking about direct to consumer, constantly talking about new opportunities, the opportunity around well, he had a lot of data in regards to what was moving in Australia and across the world, but mainly in Australia and this is your comment around
sex toys and she like now kids. That sort of data came from groupon days where when groupon was a really big thing. Rich had access to that data seeing what were the biggest movers and this is where they came in in suitcases obviously was another one as well. We'd seen what was happening overseas in some of the bigger growth markets of America and Europe, and nobody was looking at apac here. We had a marketing person x
strategy director for a large multinational agency. We had another person whose supply chain guru, being a very strong conjuit between China and the West and supplying product and manufacturing product at scale, and so we thought we had a really good chance at tackling that market. So it's a really weird one as well. There are a lot of competitors and a lot of different things. In luggage, there's only a couple SAMSUNGI dominates most market share across the world.
Like I call it thirty percent, then it's our vmah, and then everyone else is a long tail. So I've said that a few times and that still stands true. There are not that many competitors out there. So our opportunity is, can we create an interesting brand in a bording category. Can we do something a little bit different?
Can we turn it into a fashion accessory? And you know, I mean, we're a couple of cool guys, but I don't know if we're necessarily fashion people, and so wanting to create something a little bit different in the category. It was a learning curve for us to you know, it was a high risk thing where we had to invest quite a bit in design and manufacturing a product we did not know was going to land well with people.
And I remember early days. Currently, if you know what the suitcase looks, I know you do, but the people listening, if you don't know, there's our logos molded into the suitcase. That was a really big issue for people in our first year because nobody knew what the brand was and what it represented, and they didn't want such a big logo in the suitcase that they didn't want to be
associated with. So for us, it was really early days trying to mean something, trying to be as authentic as possible in order for people to be able to trust us in a category that is predominantly most people know the one brand that they want to buy.
Oh my god, there's so many reasons why.
That makes me really excited, because I think the biggest barriers to people kind of starting something or having an idea and rolling with it is often being intimidated by the landscape that already exists. So if there's a Samsonite, you kind of self select yourself out of it and go, oh, I'm not even going to try and go up against them,
So most people wouldn't even try. Secondly, not having experience, like you've not worked in luggage before, either of you, and if you don't describe yourself as a fashion guy like this would be, you know, quite a new venture for all of you.
I don't think I'm bad at it, you know, I know nothing about the category, but I think maybe I can do it.
I can do something here is yeah, and yeah. I think it's a really important reminder.
You don't have to People will assume you have to be first to market really to make a big splash, but you just have to do something slightly different in a category that already exists.
You don't always have to be the first. You don't always have to be inventing.
You know. I've heard you say a couple of times reinventing the wheel, but before we actually move further into July. It so one of the questions I find really interesting because CZA is so much about more of the macro of your journey in getting there to this idea and the relationship between happiness and success. When you were doing three thousand Thieves Coffee, and that was ten years ago, it was going really well. You were already successful in business.
What I get really fascinated by is when people agitate for the change that brings about the next chapter. So because you didn't stumble upon July as like a there was no aha moment of you guys meeting at an airport lounge, It didn't just fall into your lap. The
timeline to be something you actually brought about yourself. And when you're already successful, or when you're already doing something that's worthy and you feel really fulfilled and good about it, I always wonder I don't worry about people who are unhappy because I think they'll inevitably change something when it gets too unhappy or too uncomfortable. But people who are fine and that they're okay on the journey they're on.
Did you think you'd do the coffee business forever?
Like? What made you think, oh, maybe it's time to start something new?
Was it?
Were you happy and successful before that? Or did you feel you needed more? Like what brought about the whole chapter that we now know you on?
Yeah, what an interesting question. I have a theory about things. I don't know is the answer, But I have a theory about things that yes, I know. Child. We're talking about children before, and I having children for women is a big life moment, and I believe it to be one for men as well. And if you take even just the sample of your group of friends, men who are about to have a child always do something drastic
every time. I almost nine out of ten times. Men will always go and they might not consciously think it, they will say, I'm going to do something. I'm either going to double down and this is going to be for the next five ten years, or I'm leaving and going to start something. We're going to go join another firm or do something else. Just before you have the child, and I feel like that's like something where where we're building, we're sort of dnading to figure something out ours for
ourselves to make sure the survival of our offspring. That's a really weird comment for that answer for that question, but I genuinely think men try something, they start to jump, they do something drastic. At that point, I didn't think that that was the reason I did anything. It just so happens that when my first daughter was born, we had registered the July business, so within within a week or so, and leading up to that was obviously the
build up to the July stuff. So knowing that Richard as well, rich was gearing up for it too, so there was a bit of momentum there. And I've seen it with all my particular friends that at that particular life moment for the first one, there is something that triggers and goes, well, what am I actually going to
do for the rest of my life. The coffee business was a side hustle that I started while working in advertising, and it grew to a point where I was getting worse at my job because that was growing, and I had to make a judgment call and go, well, am I gonna Am I going to stay here or am I going to give this thing a go? You know, half the money? But I want to see it. I want to see it grow. I've personally found a lot of comfort in this autonomy, mastery, purpose framework for how
you run your life. And it means that you don't really have to do any particular category as long as you feel like you're succeeding. As long as you feel like you've got a purpose in what you're doing and that you like being associated with that thing and that you're good at it, you can make your own choices and may I also suffer your own consequences as I find out lot of comfort in that. And so I made that jump, and I enjoyed being the coffee guy
for a few years. I enjoyed doing that and meeting people and it becomes a really nice part of you. And I feel like I've lived almost four different lives being you know, one like the chicken guy, the advertising guy, the coffee guy. At one stage I was a cowork guy and now being the suitcase guy. So I feel like I've lived those differences and been happy to jump
ship each time. You know, I wouldn't call it. Maybe I'm not complacent, But at the same time, I think it's a niche, and maybe it's a niche that is a little bit psychotic that my wife or my parents don't necessarily find comforting. You know. I would imagine it was pretty tough for my wife for the longest time because I was floating in between ideas and is this one going to work? What's going to happen? When are we're going to start a family? We're never going to
do all these things. And you imagine now being six months pregnant, and I'm like, how about suitcases? What do you think about? It sounds a little bit crazy. It's crazy, And I can see that you would have to have a lot of patience. And I imagine my parents after all the investment, not you know, after all the years of education, after everything, that's what they've done, like, actually, I'm not going to go to UNI. I'm going to go to odd a suburb's Victoria and start a chuck
old chicken shop. I would imagine there was a little bit of there was a little bit of discomfort there. So you know, maybe the right answer is that it's not about It's not about me, and what I think I can do between them. But maybe I've surrounded myself with people. I've been lucky enough to have people around me that are fully supportive of the erraticness of jumping between ideas, because without that support, maybe none of that would have happened as well.
Oh my gosh, well, I definitely want to come back to that, because I don't know that many people know about your beautiful wife and her incredible career, and I definitely want to touch on having two big careers in one family and the support network.
That you provide for each other.
He's a champion here.
Oh you're batting for sure, soz just calling it how it is. But coming back to just quickly what you said about being four different lifetimes. You've lived so far, and this might not even be the only one. Now that you live, you will continue to live many more. I think that people really silo themselves and they think, oh, I've started a coffee business.
I'm going to be the coffee guy forever.
I jumped out of my comfort zone once, pat on the back, I'm going to sail off into the future. Now I'm happy and successful and I've ticked all my boxes. But I think what's really refreshing about you is that it's okay. You're embracing that it's meant to be a
different chapter all the time. And what holds a lot of people back from that, I think is firstly like security, wanting certainty and stability, and of course there's financial commitments and whatever, but it's also your risk appetite, your ability to to see that something could work rather than seeing
that it could only fail. It is having the right support network in place to say, you know what, it's a bit crazy, but like someone's got to try it, and someone's got to have success, so why not you have you found? And this comes up a lot more masternalinization, but a lot more for women than it does for men that in the jump between categories and between chapters of You, you did face any kind of imposter syndrome doubt? Did you worry about failure? Did you worry about perception?
Did you worry about like what if it all goes to shit? What if suitcases doesn't work? Do you think about that stuff? Or do you just run so fast at the next idea that suddenly you're in Paris at the Olympics as the official luggage wants and you're like, holy shit, were here?
Like do you ever face those barriers or do you just rip the band aid?
I mean, I like to think I put on a really good face where people go this guy has got the confidence and the arrogance that is in abundance, and there's nothing that can take this guy. And I definitely put on that persona as much as possible. The imposter syndrome thing is real when you're killing it and you think that you shouldn't be. I remember feeling weird about things, and I don't even know how to call it, but weird is going to be the word I use.
Because this is an ongoing theme. You and the Weird Unit thing.
Yeah, it's weird. It's all weird. It's just weird. Maybe I'm going to read more books that my vocame's not very good. It's weird in the sense that you know, you're at a barbecue at a dinner party and it's always like, oh, so what do you do? And the work thing becomes part of you. I feel like in certain groups people don't ask about work, which is always great and a big relief for a lot of people.
Is it such an anxiety moment? When you go to a dinner party, you're not really proud, or maybe haven't been as successful in a certain area for a little bit of time, but you have to be You're representing your choice in work at that point in time, and so you have to you have to carry that choice at the dinner party, and sometimes it doesn't play off,
and you do feel that anxiousness. And I remember for a long time, you know, a lot of my friends are working for Google and doing all these cool things and making some big money and traveling the world, and you know, I had the coffee subscription business, this little business that was kind of cool to talk about, but not really not really something that at that level people could engage with. They're like, oh, that's that's kind of cool,
and that would be that would be about it. And I remember that being a big thing for a long time, just not really knowing how to answer that question at parties or when meeting people. So you know, that feeling
has been around for a long time. You know, there are a couple of people in my life who I've met who understood that weirdness and understood that awkwardness and always protected me, which is such a funny thing, and I acknowledge it now and I knew it back then too, but I really appreciate it now, and I try and pay that forward a little bit whenever I see somebody in that in that position where they've kind of understood that everyone else is in banking, everyone else is doing
their thing. Somebody comes and says something that's little bit left of center for the group, and they come in a verbally outwardly supported and engaging conversation in that to the group. I feel like that that kind of barbecue test has always been a moment for me where am I happy with what I'm doing and is it reflective of who I feel like I am In reverse to all of that weirdness now where I feel like I've had some success with July, I play it down even
more now. When people ask me, oh, so what do you do? I say, I sell suitcases on the internet, because like, Okay, you're in Melbourne and you get it, You're you know, across Melbourne and Sydney. People understand, oh yeah, cool, it's July addsid but no one else really really knows the brand and it doesn't mean anything to them.
I mean, you're playing it down right, now I think that's definitely not true, but okay, continue in certain circles.
I'd be like, I sell suitcases on the internet just to see the reaction that I get from people, just to see how they handle it when they're given a curveball where they're trying to find something to relate to have a conversation with me over dinner, and it's quite funny. Now now I like to I like to play around with it. So I think it goes to and from in terms of your success levels and where you feel
comfortable what success is. I've met a guy the other day who's done a credible building career, but all he thinks about is roasting coffee. And it just met him the other day for the first time. He goes, I'm obsessed. I'm roasting at home, I'm doing all these things. I'm trying this. But he needs to support his family and his lifestyle through the work he's doing in building, but
he's obsessed with coffee. And so we spent hours, like I couldn't care less about the building industry, but I love talking to him about coffee, and I think he appreciated that I had some connection to coffee and that we could continue the conversation there and go deep with it. So's I don't know if I answer your questions.
No, I love it.
There are moments where you do feel weird about saying what you do and like you're an ex lawyer, right if I remember correctly? Yes, yeah, And so here's the funny thing about ex lawyer. You can do anything towards anything. You can sell fairy floss and as long as you call yourself an ex layer because you've already half validated that you can.
But I chose, do you know what's so funny? I often say that I leave ex lawyer in my bio and in all of my like kind of self you know, self marketing materials, the deck for MCing and all that stuff. Because of that, it is such a self validation. Like as much as I'm like I've gone and lived the dream, I've seized maya, there is something so much about you know, like am I still successful enough? And I have to drop that in there? And it does come from a
place of self doubt. It's fascinating when you really reflect on, like why did I leave that in there?
It is and it's the right thing to do, right because other people do judge and they read into it, and you've got to kind of take them on that journey in the shortest way possible. You know, it's nice to be able to have those things, and I think you take those things away, it makes things a lot harder, and I feel like some of that anxiety starts to come back and go, like, what's the best way to explain what I do? In a really funny story, I'll
tell you a really quick one. I don't know if how we're going for time, but tell you a really funny story. I had a friend travel with me recently and he is the importer for Redheads products, so matches and things like that, and so in our meetings, you know, he's tagging along to a couple of meetings with me and they'll ask him, They're like, oh cool, you know
you part of lad what do you do? And so he's had to be in a position where he he's not talking to Walworth or Colls, He's completely out a category and has to jump to a really quick explanation as to what he does and how he explains things. And so we workshopped it. After like five or six different meetings, we ended up workshopping the right answer because he started to sound like a drug dealer. He's like, I do import export. You know, we say that, mane,
you know that sounds dodgy. So we landed on something that was really funny, which was, you know, the supermarket and how they sell food. And they're like, yeah, it's like I do the non food.
Yeah nice, Yeah, I get it now, but non food it's such a branding exercise.
It's such a funny thing anyway. So all that thing comes back to how do you feel like you're succeeding. I think a lot of it is how you can convey yourself to other people when you're chatting to them, and how confident you are in the position you're in at the time you tell them that, look, I'm doing something that I love. Success is what not only would I see, but were you see me as well?
I could talk to you about that for a whole episode in itself. The reason this podcast started was because I'm so fascinated by the matrix of success, joy fulfillment, and identity and how like so much of it is Hi, what's your name?
What do you do?
It's not high what's your name? What do you love what makes you happy? Like are you happy? Is anyone even happy? We don't even ask that question.
And so I want to spend the last part of the podcast on the part of your identity that isn't always about July and what you do in your output and the success that you've had, because I think that's also like a beautiful part of getting to know you.
But before we do move on to that, because you have had such incredible success with July and have just been at the Olympics, which I definitely want to hear about, but first must acknowledge that you play it down, Like you mentioned that you play it down sometimes when it is going really well. But what a lot of people might not remember is that you lost ninety five percent
of your revenue. It's only been around for five years, and in that five year period you've had the highest highs but also some like drastically low lows, like the world stopped traveling.
You know, a year into your business.
In those moments, I can imagine it was very hard to tell people that you sell suitcases, like in the middle of COVID, what do you do? I mean, travel items that people need when they travel, which no one is doing how do you deal with the shitty bits of business?
Yeah, that was tough. That was really shitty. I would say July's definitely represented the highest highs and the lowest lows for me today. There's always shit in business. There's always stuff that happens when and if you're killing it, something else will. You know, there's there's a culture people problem. If the revenue is not there, then it's about resourcing and cash to get there. I don't think business ever sort of sits still where you're like, oh, everything's absolutely
amazing and let's not touch anything. I think the whole nature of business is that there's always something that's on fire, and sometimes it's just not revenue. Sometimes it's just over the other things. So, yeah, Covid was definitely tough game. I think it was even I wouldn't say worse, but was really tough. Is that in the e commerce community in particular, there were people who are absolutely killing it. Yeah, that was not tough because I love them and I
love that for them too. They were doing really, really well. But there were some people just through covids making a lot a lot of money and having a lot of success. And if you remember COVID. It was meant to end every month, but didn't and just kept going and kept going, kept going, so we didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. It was great to have a supportive business planner, supportive family who you know. It just
kind of like went on with the punches. But again, we all work and we kept the lights on and things were pretty good. So there's always going to be shoot parts of business. I think you've got to be weary of the fact that that's what business is about. It's always revenue problems to begin with, and then there's other problems that come in as well that just require different levels of solution. Just got to get in there and try to solved things. But nothing's ever going to
be peachy. The difference is that maybe one day you're making a little bit more money than you were before.
Well, I mean now you're also achieving incredible things. Tell us about parents. I mean, you just came home. You were the official luggage sponsor for the Olympic team, and that's I mean gigantic, like massive. Do you stop and celebrate the wins? Is this been in the pipeline for a really long time? What's your ultimate vision for July.
That was a really cool one. That was we've done a couple of Olympics, but nobody really talks about them. We did Beijing Winter but again that was a tough one. And then Commonwealth Games. Nobody really talks the Commonalth Games in Birmingham in Birmingham, and so then we had Paris twenty twenty four, and so we'd already been supporting the Australian Olympic team for a few years, but this was our first chance that everybody actually really wanted to talk
about it, and the case looked starting. But we had this magic marketing moment again like we're you know, we're Australian five years in relatively small business on the grand scale of some of the partners that are with you, the Olympic team, the Australian Olympic team. And here we've got now at the end of the Olympics in a private hanger for conas the athletes coming out of the plane in their uniform with their medals on, carrying a
July suitcase down the stairs, meeting the Prime Minister. You know, I'm sitting there taking photos of worrying like this is really what are we doing here. It was such a cool moment that I am forever grateful to the team who engaged us and the team who made the product here in July was such a magic thing. And I mean, I sell suitcases on the incience there like it's not you know what I mean, We're not saving children at
the end of the day. It's an interesting product category where people have fallen in love with because a lot of people travel and they you know, they love their suitcases. They love the memories it represents. And we're just so lucky that we could be part of this training. The useem in Paris and we went Richard and I went over. It's been a week there, We met the athletes, we watched the games. Is iconic. I mean, where do you go from here? You know, I know, I know it's
all down hill. Maybe I don't know.
I mean, at least it would roll smoothly because your wheel balance is just amazing. So I mean, it is actually really incredible the buzz you've been able to create with an item that isn't an everyday item, Like it isn't something that you have a touch point with every day.
People don't travel like that regularly.
But yet July has become a household name in such a short amount of time, given that for three of those years we weren't really traveling at all. So I mean, huge, huge congratulations. That's like quite a feat to achieve that we're so in love with our suitcases.
It's a it's a super cool thing, Dorry. I feel it every day, so I don't take it for granted. Add all. I love it. I love chatting to people about it. Just before, the reason why I was late to this phone call is because I'm buying a suit for my sister's wedding the day before I leave. That's the level of unpreparedness that I live my life too. And I spent fifteen minutes talking to the guy behind the counter about his suitcases because he was obsessed with
suitcases and details. I'm like, we've got to keep chatting, you know that. That was the level I knew that I was late, but I had to keep talking to this guy because he was just so into it. He was into the category. He knew every detail about every brand. I'm like, this guy's just an enigma out of nowhere.
That's so random.
I love suitcases that much. It's just a weird. It's really interesting category. It's a really interesting category.
It's also really interesting. So that leads really nicely to the last section, which is just all about your joy. Really you're yay, but it has to be something that's outside of your working identity, because I think nobody can be consumed by their work and like sustain that.
It's just not sustainable. But it's also not the way we were built.
You're not meant to work and die. Even if you love what you're doing, you can't kind of stay fresh and have new ideas if you don't have a family life and other passions. And one of the things I'm pains to always emphasize is that what makes someone excited could be someone else's nightmare. Like my favorite episode we've ever done was the Thai Cave diver, whose joy is swimming through coffee colored water in tiny claustrophobic holes, which
is my idea of hell. But that is his joy and he sticks with it, so good on him.
That's crazy.
The guy that you spoke to, his joy is suitcases, Like who knew that someone could be so passionate about suitcases?
So for you, what is your joy? Is it still the stamps. Do you have anything in your life that's.
Just that thing you do that like you would do even if you didn't make money from it, you know what I mean, Like you would pay to be able to keep doing that in your life just because it brings you joy and it makes you forget what time it is, you know.
I And now I feel like I should have read the questions and prepared for this one, but better because I say that, like I've always We've had a joke, running joke with a couple of friends of mine where we're kind of out of hobbies at the moment. We're not really in hobby moment. We've dropped a couple of things, you know, we're not really going and doing these things.
We're out of work where you know, we're super engaged with it's only been the last twelve to eighteen months where we're phoning ourselves now we're all being too busy to do the hobbies, and so like, I'm not going to answer the question, but I'll throw a few things at it right because I'm three kids deep right now. We are a six year old or four year old, an almost one year old, and that takes up a lot of joy, and a lot of time. Everyone loves their kids, right, No one's going to say that they
had their kids. I absolutely adore my kids, and any waking minute that I've got outside of work, I end up spending with these guys. It's super fun watching him learn how to ride a bike, taking him skating, doing all the fun things is It's just a great way to spend the weekend. And I know I've had a good weekend. When my step counts like hit over twenty five thousand, I'm like, oh, great's I've done my job as a parent, as a dad, I've done my job.
And so right now, that seems to be the things that's consuming a lot of time in what typically would be the hobby space. It feels like a cop out to just be like, my family is my joy, and they are everybody's family should be their joy. But I do feel like that you still need to have your own time. You still need to have personal time to be able to sort of recover and feel fresh, to be able to have the energy to bring back to the family and back to the job. I will answer
in a way with jogging. At the moment, I found that practicing to jog getting better at jogging. It wouldn't say I'm very good at it just yet, but getting better at it and seeing the milestone growth and slowly slowly getting the numbers up and getting better at it, and putting their headphones in and listening to Coach Bennett on the Nike app, slowly slowly getting me to the five, the six, six and a half, you know, the seven point two. Then you add another song and you get
the seven point four. That for me has been the small winds in between all the craziness that's happening between family and work.
Well, I think it's also a really nice acknowledgment. The fact that you haven't had hobbies is that in an ideal world, it's artificial for me to say.
Everyone els to have a platigo. You have to have time.
But you know, like if you have three kids and a huge business and your wife is the sea of Russianale. Everyone who doesn't already know this huge, two biggeries in one family, you know you're not always going to have time left over to just go and like forage for mushrooms and plant your own whatever it is.
Forage for mushrooms. There's too much media out there with mushrooms.
Man, I'm like, yeah, that was a bad example.
Oh forage for Parsley. You know, you don't hear much about herb Foragers. It's always mushrooms.
Parsley is good, you know, nice and innocent. Let's just go.
So safe.
So yeah, I mean, just to finish out because I wish we'd touched on it more, but I've got to way too carried away. How do you guys go I feel like often there is one big career, especially with a new business, that is you're the founder. You know, you're out at the forefront kind of driving this all the time. There's often room for one of those in a marriage and let alone three children, and then your wife being a CEO with her own massive career as well.
How do you guys do that?
And do you find like how does the ego in who's kind of getting the time or getting the support and how.
Does that work?
Like if we struggle with that, and especially when we work together, but now that we don't, we often find, you know, it's push pull all the time, both having careers.
How do you guys balance that?
It's tough. We look at the weekly revenue figures and whoever's making more money.
Yeah, good answer.
I mean she's the talent I think the main thing. Of course, I'm going to say that, right, but she actually is. And if you I mean you know her, you meet her, she's clearly ten x on anything else. But the really interesting thing, and the really funny thing about our relationship is that, particularly with Chamani and her work, her main part of her job is dealing with the founder and the founders. We come up with crazy ideas, we're erraty, we want to jump onto new things, unjustified,
gut feeling, big movements. She has to deal with that day to day at work, and then she comes home and she sees me and probably just goes, I can deal with it. I know exactly how to deal with this thing.
Yeah, I've got the toolkit for this guy.
I'm light compared to that man is an actual genius. And so you know, I for sure she just comes home and just goes like, I know this playbook in and out. I'm not going to react. You can do whatever it needs to do, and just make sure that you're home by ads so we can feed the kids. I think that says a lot about our relationship. I think she knows how to be with me, and I love being with her. So it's been a great way to be able to grow and raise a family and
obviously fully supportive for the longest time. You know, we bring up COVID. Before July, I wasn't making any money. She was putting me in the family before that, doing a few other crazy ideas, and you know, before she joined Russia. Now you know, me helping her guide her through what her next career point is going to be. It's been a good working relationship in just helping each other. And you know, you want the other person to succeed, right like, you want them to grow and be happy
and do all the things. And if that's what makes it happy, then by all means you should do.
It swings and roundabouts too.
I think I hope she thinks the same thing about me, And I'm sure the same thing with your relationship as well. You want your guys to be happy, like, there's nothing worse than being in an unhappy relationship. So support in any way you can.
Yeah, one hundred percent.
Well, I have taken up so much of your time, and I'm very aware that you're leaving tomorrow. I had no idea it was tomorrow actually, so thank you so much for your time. That was fascinating. Congratulations on all the success. I hope you get some time off and have some hobby time over in Greece to enjoy the sunshine. And you obviously travel with July bags, right or do you find that weird?
No? I travel. There's no way that I know not in a July, and I'm close enough to them, I will literally unpack their bag and make sure that they get into one of mine's. There's no way that that happens.
Well, I hope you have the most amazing trip. Thank you so much for your time. I've have spoken to you for like five hours. I wish I had been more eloquent and had less of a mumbrain because I had so much more to ask.
But when I come back, yeah, I appreciate.
It so much. Older you'll get some sleep, I'll get some sleep.
Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Thanks Sarah, Thanks for having.
Me what an absolutely fascinating human being, an incredible backstory behind a brand we.
All know and love. As I said at the start, I wish that I had had five hours to speak to eight.
Then I could have kept going and as soon as we finished recording, I thought of eight hundred questions that I wanted to ask that I didn't get to, but maybe we'll have to do a part two that I do.
Hope you guys.
Enjoyed that hour, and if you have any other questions, please to forward them on I can pass them on to him. If you have any major takeaways or anything that you enjoyed in the episode, please do share so that we can keep spreading the neighborhood love as far and wide as possible, and also show our guests what we took away from them so generously giving us at their time. Now that we're back recording guests, if there's anyone you want to hear from or anything you want.
To hear about.
Always, you guys know the dms are open and we love to hear feedback so that I can make sure I'm giving you exactly what you want. And in the meantime, I hope you're having a wonderful week and are seizing you're yay.