I just kind of think about it as like the spins are the rule at wheel. You know, it's if you think about it like it's a game to keep playing. If you keep spinning the rule that will, you're going to hit the jackpot. And the people who get somewhere, the people who just keep spinning. Two friends that at outwears Great Dev's helped me and they built this beautiful app for us, and we submitted it and oh great, you get an A but Apple featured it and we
immediately got seven thousand users overnight. Oh man, that was our first big kind of kick.
Welcome to the Sees the Yay Podcast. Busy and happy are not the same thing. We too rarely question what makes the heart seeing. We work, then we rest, but rarely we play and often don't realize there's more than one way. So this is a platform to hear and explore the stories of those who found lives. They adore, the good, bad and ugly, The best and worst day
will bear all the facets of seizing your yay. I'm Sarah Davidson or a spoonful of Sarah, a lawyer turned funentrepreneur who swapped the suits and heels to co found Matcha Maiden and Matcha Milk Bark CZA is a series of conversations on finding a life you love and exploring the self doubt, challenge, joy and fulfillment along the way.
Many of our guests on the show tell incredible stories of trying lots of different things that they don't really love before stumbling on a particular YA that then changes their life. What has fascinated me about George Hartley since the day we first met is that he's loved then left lots of different yays to end up in his current chapter in an industry that he originally knew absolutely
nothing about. I was first introduced to George as the co founder and chief Marketing and Product officer of Blue Thumb, Australia's largest online art marketplace, which many of you have probably already heard of or purchased from, but if you haven't,
George describes it as the SoundCloud of art. Launched in twenty twelve, blue Thumb connects over twenty thousand Australian artists with collectors, facilitating the sale of more than one hundred thousand original artworks to date, with around half a million
dollars worth of art currently for sale. How he has completely revolutionized the art industry, which was previously quite inaccessible and intimidating with laws of middlemen, and then grown the Bluethorm business to extraordinary heights, having recently launched in the USA. Is a fascinating story in itself. I didn't, however, expect to ask about his prior connections to the art world and where the idea was spawned, only to hear him say, oh, no,
I know nothing about art. While I've always been a pretty big proponent of finding a business idea out of a gap in the market that you stumble upon yourself as a consumer, so you have a personal connection. George is an amazing example that you can, of course reverse engineer a business by perceiving a gap in the market without any prior connections, qualifications, or a foot in the door, and that that can often in fact be an advantage.
Much to my surprise, he actually began by studying marketing and accounting at UNI, had an entire marketing Korea. He then left to do music full time, which he then interned, left to do a master's in computer science, and then worked in ux design, all before Blue Thumb began. I loved our first chat at a founder's dinner where this all unraveled, and have been wanting to continue it in depth so much, and you guys just happened to benefit
from that too, so I hope you all enjoy. George, Welcome to SEZ THEA.
Thanks Sarah. Great to be here.
Oh it's so so lovely to see you. How do we make friends? It's a bit random. I was a customer, then we connected online, and then we met like a week later out of the blue at an event, but I did know you were going to be here. And one of my new best friends is your wife, so we have so many different connections.
Absolutely. Yeah. She's a huge fan of the pod, like super fan, and when I told her I chatted at that dinner, she was like, oh, oh my god, you have to go on the pod. So yeah, she's like, I'm excited to be here, and she's even more excited.
It's actually the sweetest. She came for the start of this session today, so I got to meet her in real life, and I absolutely love that I have a super fan. I didn't even know they existed, so that's just absolutely delightful. Thank you for bringing the AA to my dad. Well, I'm so excited to have you here because I had been a customer of Blue Thumb before
I knew any of your story. And of course, the natural assumption is that art is in your background or in your history or family, or that there's some kind of logical connection. But one of my favorite parts of CZA is finding pathways that don't necessarily make as much sense, and they have lots of different dots that connect in different ways. So there was an AFI article about you that I came across about the business in my research, and it was all about music, not art, nothing to
do with art. Yes, So the beginning of your story is actually much more musical. Tell us about your childhood and what you thought you'd kind of be back then.
Yeah, well yeah, Blue Thumb kind of. I guess it's the is the second big thing I've done with my life. My you know, I always thought I'd be a musician, and that was my one like one searing passion was music, I guess, So yeah, I sort of always just loved music playing, you know, growing up I played in bands.
I played the trombone and the bass guitar as well and keyboards, and I'd always had bands with my best friends when when we were kind of in high school and then at university, and even I worked as an English teacher in Japan.
I formed a band.
Random, so I finished the Minion and then I went to Japan to teach English. But I joined a band over there, like a Japanese rock band, and I was the bass player, and well, yeah, we played a whole bunch of great shows as well while I was doing that. And I came back and I grew up in Adelaide, and I chose to move to Melbourne because this is kind of like the cultural harb is where the best music was, all right, and I just wanted to be
surrounded by it. And so I kind of i'd finished university and I went into marketing because I didn't really know what else to do. And I was playing in bands here in Melbourne, and a few years into marketing, I was sort of like, I'm not very good at this.
I was at a big ard agency. I slacked at it, and I was like there must be more, you know, So I quit and I went to play music full time in my twenties for a few years, and after about you know, mid to late twenties, it just wasn't happening, and it was really hard, and it was really hard to think you only want to do one thing, and like I felt like I was only really good at that one thing. Well, it's all you've done, It's all
I'd really focused on. Yeah, it'd been just my passion, and so I'm like it was one of those really hard moments where I'm like, if this isn't working, then what you know? And it was literally around that time, I was probably twenty six. I got an iPhone. I'm like, oh, I.
Love this, Hello New World.
Yeah, and I started reading the jobs biography at the same time, like, oh, this is interesting, and I kind of thought back on actually, I also have loved technology, used to make websites for friends. I'd always be there, sort of the technology person, and I did like it. I was going to study it at union. Then I didn't see it, Like I took the advice to someone who said, oh, you'll be plugging in cables at Telstra, Like, oh god, that sounds like death on a stick. I'm
not going to study that. So but I got you know, I got a twenty at school for it, and I was good at it, and I liked it, and I'm like, actually, I think I like that as well. So I made this kind of this big call and I just stopped music and studied study computer science, and that kicked off what I'm doing now. Yeah, I mean.
That in itself is before we even get to the second big iteration of your career. The fact that you had this one searing passion, and that is also like, I think the arts is something that people are also often discouraged from because it is so hard and it's so competitive and you're never going to make it and blah blah blah. The fact that you actually quit everything, you've done one big leap of faith. You've quit everything,
quit your marketing job to go into music. That already is a huge theme in CZA taking a big risk on something, but often the story is looking back, you took a risk and it worked, but you took a risk and it didn't necessarily work out the way that you'd hope, And like, I think, I think we also come to see failure as like a big scary thing that's awful, and then your life will be over. But that led to this pivot, which then led to the coolest thing ever. So I love this. There's so many
themes in the story already that are amazing. But before we get to the sort of more computer science tech part and then the Blue Thumb story, can you talk us through the mindset that you had at the time, because I think it's easy to tell it now that we know that it's all worked out for you, But at the time, when you've been passionate about something your whole life, you have risked everything. How did you confront that feeling of failure or the feeling of like, what
else do I do? Because I think one of the big things we do as humans is we stilo ourselves into I'm a musician, or I'm creative, or I'm not creative, or I'm a numbers person, and then we think you can't be anything else ever, But I think we're actually really agile and versatile. But you have to let yourself.
Yeah, absolutely no. And it felt scary, like it felt petrifying at the time to do, but also it's sort of I do like trying things. I do like I like the feeling of progressing at something, and I think most people do you know whether you're it's a skill or a hobby or a new kind of work stream. I like that feeling of becoming better at something, progressing, you know, towards mastery, and so I kind of thought
about it like that a little bit as well. I'm like, oh, look, you know, maybe wor at worst kind of I can pick my base up again, but at least I'll learn how to kind of make apps, you know, make websites. So I kind of thought about it that way at the time. But you know, looking back, it's like, I'm so glad my path led me here. Yeah, and you know, of course it was a good idea to like go
into tech. Of course it was a good idea to become you know, to join an app developer and then start Blue Thumb and then you know, raise money and all this stuff. But at the time petrified these moments. Yeah, you don't know what to do, but I did, you know, optimize towards kind of action and just trying something so and you have less to lose than you realize. Yes, you know, it's actually you never regret action, really, you know, I only ever regret in action.
It's so true. I love that you can remember that. It was petrifying because I think often people who are listening to the podcast often tune in because they're in that earlier phase where it hasn't worked out yet, and they are in that like, oh my god, this thing hasn't worked out or I haven't quite found my blue thumb yet. But even going back to UNI as kind of in an industry that you hadn't you know, done your undergrady, and even that's overwhelming. What was that like?
Well, I was going through some boxes the other day and I found the rejection letter from r MIT. No, what I've forgotten? I got rejected really because I applied for a Masters of Computer Science and I didn't have an undergrade in computer programming, and I.
Didn't you did it becom right?
Yeah? Yeah, I did become Yeah, and I'd forgotten it, like I've got a terrible memory there, I forget bloody everything.
I'm the same, I've watched the same So this is such an aside, but mine is so bad that I watched Chernobyl the series, like I've watched the entire thing. I knew i'd watched the entire thing, but I was like, oh, it's been long enough, I've forgotten it. I'll go back to the start. I watched episode six first, but because it's all out of order, I was like, oh, this
is episode one. Didn't know got to the end. The black and white credits came up at the end saying and then this person went to jail, and I was like, that's weird that they did that in episode one. It was like, I have absolutely lost my marvel. So I'm with you.
Yeah, no, that's a great series. I've got to rewatch it.
I don't even know why that change.
That's all my brain's doing, right, I know that's my brain too. I forget everything, and I've forgotten. I've been rejected. And I looked at this rejection that I'm like, I couldn't even know. I'm like, then I remembered I actually had got knocked back, and I went in to meet the vice dean of computer science, and for some reason
I convinced them. I can vaguely remember saying, no, I'm really good at programming, blah blah blah, you do't regret, and they tried to talk me out of it, and somehow I got in even though I'd got this formal rejection. I remember, I only remembered it when I saw the piece of paper. So yeah, they didn't think it was a good idea either.
I guess I love it. You're just like I refused to accept that.
Yeah, and I found the rejection letter for the Blue Tharm business plan for their business competition. I applied for it, you know, in second or third year, I remember that. But Blue Thumb the app was a UNI project for r MIT.
Actually really yeah, so.
It was maybe the third year of it or whatever. I was working as an app developer and that was like the first job I'd actually loved in my life. I'd be twenty seven or something. I sort of went to outwear they are the best app makers, said I want to work here, and they're like, can you program that?
Not yet?
Yeah, well I'm two months into the UNI Like, well then you're useless to us. I'm like, no, no, no, what else do you need? And they had this argument, the two founders in front of me, like we don't need and we need developer as well. I'm here, And eventually they're like, look, you can do it day a week doing some marketing. Maybe do you know how to design? I'm like, what's that? Do you know? U? Ex design? Like I'm doing course next semester, Like okay, you can
maybe try that. So anyway, I've worked with these developers and there's the first job i'd loved, and now I was there and I had this unique assignment for RT to do to make an app like an iOS app, and oh blue Thumb, you know, we're just getting rolling with the website, we'll make an app for it. And I was not a very good dev. I never was
a good dev. But a friend, two friends that at outwears Great devs helped me and they built this beautiful app for us that was like lovely experience of our website, and we submitted it and RT, oh great, you get an A but Apple featured it and we immediately got seven thousand yearss overnight.
Oh man.
That was our first big kind of kick forward was my UNI app that the guys at work and helped me build got featured. That's amazing, sent things up like the first you know, you get these step changes occasionally, very occasionally. That was the first one.
Well, I think the first one is that you had a first career that didn't work. That was the first step. I always come back to that idea that you know, and people listening will be like, oh my god, you've been talking about this for seven years now, shut up. But it's always relevant to me. And that's that you don't have to see the whole staircase. You just have to see the immediate next step that you're on, and
like that's all you can throw things at. They don't all have to work out, Like they don't all have to be the You don't have to reach the end of the staircase that you started on, like you can change direction as you go along. And I love that you didn't love what you were doing until twenty seven. And in most people's brains in the early twenties, you
think that's why too late. I think we have this like perceived schedule of life of when we should find our passion and when we should find what we're going to do. But you hadn't even entered the industry that you ended up in, like your whole family's music. You have a history in music, You were doing it full time, and you never considered that there was anything else for you. I think anyone listening who is all consumed in something and you don't love it, but you don't know where
else you can go. That's okay, It's so common, like more common than you ever imagine. But then you have found this thing that you love, and it sounds like you had actually faced more rejection than I knew of in the story quite early on. How do you Because I think people are also they're not just scared of failure, they're also scared of rejection when someone says no to you. What does that feel like? Do you take it as a challenge. Do you have a moment where you're like, oh, well,
it's going to fail. I'm not going to do it. How do you deal with that kind of self doubt dialogue that happens when you do get a know because for some people that'll be it blue. Some would have never got off the ground. But I love that you were like, fuck it, I'm going to do it anyway. Oh r M, I T you take that back. I'm going to force my way into this course.
Look, I take notes, so personally, I like I've got the thinner skin in the world. Like I sit back and I'm like, oh, it's all, oh give up, No, this is a terrible idea. And I like, I'll have I have half a day of just moping the world's ended. I'm ship this sucks. And then it's either like I talked to Lauren or I talked to a co found or whatever, and suddenly you're like, you're back on. Oh, those guys don't know what they're doing, Like suddenly I
don't know, Actually you're fine. And I just kind of think about it as like the spins are the rule that will. You know, It's if you think about it, like it's a game to keep playing. If you keep going, if you keep spinning the rule that will, you're gonna you're gonna hit the jackpot. You're gonna you're gonna get somewhere. And the people who get somewhere, the people who just keeps.
Me, Oh, I love.
That's all it is. It's my ambition is always far outweigh my talent in anything I've ever done that.
Is extremely inaccurately humble and absolutely.
Not you know, like I said, programming, I was never very good. Music, I was never great. I just loved it. Like, yeah, I think my ability to keep going is probably my strongest strength, more than any than any talent. So yeah, like when I get to know, I take it really personally and I have a terrible day and then.
Pretty quick turnaround. To be fair, I guess.
And then you keep going and not. Yeah, and it's always for me, like, you know, on my own, i'd never get anywhere. Like, it's always having someone to wing to, someone to bounce off, always having someone else, because if you're going through it together, you're fine.
Like that's a great point.
Yeah, it's solo founders I'm absolutely in awe of because I couldn't. I just couldn't. Yeah, but having someone there to just at least commiserate with or to agree that these guys are idiots and don't know what they're.
Doing them.
Hype girl in that moment.
Absolutely Yeah, And like my hype girl was my brother and kid.
Nice. I was thinking more Lauren, but with the pomp. Well, I love that because it's a really common theme, I think, and it doesn't get talked about as much because the media are always going to focus on the success story and the most recent chapter of your life. That's always going to be what the articles are about. But I find that when you dig a little deeper, most really successful founders have thrown a couple of ideas out at the world that have come back and not gone very well.
Like it's never not never, but it's very Unusually the first try that becomes the thing that blows up. And I just don't think you hear about that enough, because you know, why would you talk about that. But I think people who are in their first or second try that hasn't gone so well need to hear that that's not a deterrent. That's you just experimenting and playing roulette. And it's like, don't stop because the first one didn't work.
Some people it takes them like seven tries. Just keep going because you'll find the thing absolutely And yeah, give yourself a day, give yourself a couple of days if it takes that to open. Feel like failure hurts, it does, It stings, But if you bounce back, you can you can have a blue thumb. So I love that. So tell us once you had And I loved reading that. It was around the idea that art is an industry that's very intimidating. It feels sometimes a bit stuffy and
inaccessible if you don't understand the provenance of everything. And I love that you actually came to the industry as an outsider and then wanted to make it accessible. How did you like? How where did the name come from? Where did the initial concept that you turned into an app. Come from and how did you meet your co founders?
Yeah, I think coming to art from outside, like my two co founders a chartered accountant and I was like an app designer, so far away from coming to it as an outside I think has actually been a benefit to us because it sort of hadn't really been done. Like we you know, we were trying to make build tech tools for artists to sell their artwork directly to collectors, right, we wanted to ignore the middle layer of industry of art.
And Yeah, I like I hated the feeling of going to a gallery and just getting kind of like dismissed. You know, if you have to ask what it is and the price, then it's too expensive for you, you know, I hate that for you.
There are no prices in gallery like.
You know I And also when we're doing our first research, like I spoke to a few industry folks and a couple of galleries and I remember being laughed at, like properly laughed at. Yeah, And that really put fire in the belly, you know, someone like just laughing at you.
Yeah, he had your open you twenty four hours and then.
No, No, that was pure, like like, Okay, now now I'm going to try and build this out of spite.
Is a powerful emotion.
Yes, so that was like, okay, screw you, I'm going to prove that. You know, no one will ever buy art for a thousand bucks sight unseen. That was like they were pissing themselves at us. I'm like, okay, And when we hit that mask and I'm like yeah, but and yeah, we'd had bandit out a few ideas. We were going to do a wine website. I wanted to do music obviously, but SoundCloud was so good. SoundCloud was just this perfect platform that put artists right in front
of their fans. I'm like, this is perfect. We can't how are we going to beat this? But like SoundCloud for art and I was like, there's an idea, love that cloud. Yeah, Like so that was kind of That's been the vision pretty much the whole time is let's build SoundCloud for us, let's build tools for artists to sell their artwork in front of collectors. And from the start we sort of you know, I loved really nice ux, really nice technology. Like, like I said, the Jobs book
was like a real changing life pivotal moment. Reading that and I'm like, Okay, I think if we build a better product. You know, we're coming from outside art, let's just build the best technology tool. I think we will be able to kind of really get somewhere. So we just focus on a better product. And then we had to learn distribution and marketing, which was like like, oh, you actually have to think about this product person. Oh wait, we have to pay attention to SEO. So we learned
that along the way. But but yeah, it was you know, we actually we bought a website for from an art gallery, like okay, and you know, we'd bought another website for apps and stuff, so we bought this art galeries website, like, let's turn this into SoundCloud for right. So that's where that's actually where it started.
This was still at UNI, so it was still I was.
Working it out where as well doing UNI as well, and Fill and Ed were both lack accountants working full time accounting jobs, and so we're like, okay, cool, we've got this art gallery website. Let's turn it into a platform. Let's turn into a marketplace. We'll call it Blue Thumb started working on the app as well, and we sort of we chipped away with our jobs and with this blue thumb on the side for a couple of years. I'd say, real, Like I said, my memory is absolutely terrible.
This was started twenty twenty a twelve, I reckon it was maybe mid twenty thirteen. I remember that one of the best days of my Yeah, yeah, look I know this, but I do remember one of the best days of my life was when I had to stopped being the customer service person. Man Like, yeah, our first hire and customer service.
Was like just bliss, which actually is really interesting because it does come back to the fact that you do kind of have to do everything and learn everything at the start of most startups, not all of them, some need like full scale teams to start off. But even before that, I loved hearing about how you sort of
thought about wine and then you thought about art. And I think I have erroneously maybe like it works for my particular situation, but always been a big proponent of find a gap in the market where you're the consumer and you've had the experience, don't reverse engineer it, don't go I want to be a business person, Let's find an idea. Go. I stumbled upon an idea because I'm the consumer but I think you're a really good example
of that. Of course you can reverse engineer it. Of course you can say I need a business idea, where is there a gap? Look at the market and find one. And it doesn't have to be something that you know anything about. You just have to be the best at like how you present it. You have to have a skill set that. It doesn't have to be in art. It can be. Remember the conversation we had when I said, oh, obviously you're an and you were like, no, how fascinated I was. Do you remember?
I was just like I got an art podcast just so I can learn about it.
Yeah, you were like, no, I know nothing about it.
I don't. Yeah, I sit on that podcast. I'm like, oh, I haven't heard of that person that's like Lauren? Is he so much stick? Because yeah, So no, none of us knew anything about art. Dad was a painter, though he had a real passion for it. Isn't it countt who painted? So he loved art. So a house was ful of art, but he doesn't know much about it. He just likes painting. But no, none of us had a clue what I would say. Though I was building a product that I could empathize with as a musician.
Yes, so like as the artist.
Yeah, that kind of connection as to what would I need, what do I need to kind of show someone to know that there are artwork? Is kind of being you know, this is popular, this is engaging. You know that feeling of oh, you put something up and a lot of people suddenly like it. You know, what do you need to feed back to them that in a more general sense, like has has been helpful?
Yeah, that insight.
Yeah, but as far as no, like yeah, you know, I don't think I bought a painting when we launched.
It's like, again, I take back so much of what I've said before about like be your own customer, which, like, obviously it helps, it helps in so many situations. Completely agree, But it's not the only pathway. You can literally look at the market and go, what is a problem that needs solving somewhere that I have the skill set for and you can make it incredibly incredibly successful. I mean, you guys are now I think I was reading and this is an outdated article. You have like three hundred
million dollars of art for sale on the website. Oh yeah, way more now, right, Jesus like, that's crazy, this idea from a UNI project in an industry that none of the three founders are in. That's extraordinary, It's great.
No, yeah, I'm surprised, surprise myself sometimes managed to pull this off. You still waiting for someone to.
Tell you, oh, it's all fake. So what would you say to anyone else who is kind of trying to you know, has that enthusiasm, does feel like they have a good skill set, but is looking for that idea. Firstly, how do you know the idea that's going to stick? And secondly, as you upskilled? And I think this is probably the hardest learning curve for most people who go into business. You will already absolutely have some skills that are helpful and they'll just be different to everyone else's.
But you'll always have skills that you have no idea about. Like, no one goes into a business and just has everything they need already. How did you upskill? Was it mentors? Did you do courses? Did you? Like? You know, you have to wear so many hats. You have to be the customer service person. You have to learn about logistics, distribution, like legal, How did you learn all that stuff?
Yeah? So generally learning has been a combination of just scaring the Internet and Google right, a lot of reaching out to people who will talk to her those court or like catch ups with entrepreneurs. I've always made a big effort to speak to entrepreneurs who are like slightly adjacent to what we're doing, you know, vaguely within the what we're doing. Those catch ups have definitely been the most valuable learning of the last ten thirteen years. I
have been doing this. When you go and have a coffee or whatever with someone, anyone who will have you who's running, anyone.
Who says yes, because the good ones are too busy to write blogs, right, and that most of them are too busy to do to really tweet their insights.
The real alpha of this is working for our company. We've tried these eight things, and this ninth is the one that's working for growth or the one that's working for new customers or product. Those things they'll tell you in person, they're not going to they they went out on a podcast, they won't say it on a stage.
Yeah.
Those one to ones are like, yeah, that's where I pretty much learned learned all the really key stuff I would say, apart from general Yeah, Internet So those two things. That's kind of how we've learned, I think, and and just by doing Yeah, like, yeah, I think I've learned is because like we've we had another startup smart, We've had a million, We've had lots of We've tried lots
and lots of stuff. You know, we've tried twenty things, I'd say, Sarah before then the way along the way, we like, yeah, we yeah, we've had a million dead ends, Like we just can't people talking about them because they didn't work.
They're the ones you need to talk about.
I don't have I don't have any I'm not a detailed person.
I remember what they were.
I genuinely don't. But you've got all these dead ends, Like I said, it's it's you know, you're spinning the Rulett wheel. You got to so the bias for action, trying things quickly. Yeah, you know, you learn when you put something out into the world. Yeah, you know, the rabbit hits the road when someone buys something that was someone said, you know, like the quickest you can if you've got an idea, my advice or what I you know. I think what was helpful for us was not quitting
our jobs to do it. Yeah, it was doing it. You know, we had our job yea, And yeah it's hard because you don't have as much time and if I couldn't do it now with you know, two kids and everything, but when I had more time. Yeah, you've got this time outside of work to work on these things. If you still have your other job, you don't have the pressure on it. Yeah, you can have time to experiment. Yeah, it is. It's a low risk. And so if you've
got an idea, I'd say just do it. Just do whatever you're doing right now and do the idea as well.
That Yeah, so nuts and bolts wise, did it start as just the three of you know, other staff? And how did you get your first sale? Like did you have to get a critical map for anyone who's looking at a marketplace? Did you have to get a critical massive artists first? Did you already have them? Like what was kind of the growth or the chronology of U three staff, number of artists, number of sales? Do you remember your first sale? When was it? How far was the lag between like launching and then?
Yeah, so those early days, you know they're hard marketplaces, Yeah, double hard, right, Yeah, so I do remember, Yeah, we had, you know, we got we got this art gallery website. We're like, okay, we'll rebrand it, rebuild it. So that took Actually we did it really simply so that that that was quick. So we're probably back up within two months. And then I remember it was probably another two months before we sold a network, so we only had a
couple of artists on there. We went out, we did some cold emailing, and then is that how.
You scouted them the first time? Cold emails?
Yeah, yeah, cold email for heaps of stuff. Yeah yeah, yeah, cold email. And then I remember, you know, we to use oDesk a lot.
It's up, yeah, and we still do.
It's amazing. Yeah, it's like you can get an expert, you know, sitting in Europe who's who's fairly affordable and they've been doing this for twenty years and I need three hours of their time to sort out my CEO. It's incredible. It's like the Internet. I love it.
It's pretty great that Internet.
It can there's someone somewhere who can solve your problem, you know, for like four hours of their time. So we got an SEO person who said, you know, we want to rank for how do you sell art? Because we want artists to be able to find us, so we start worked on that a little bit. I thon. It took us two months to get our first sale. We had a few inquiries and I ended up calling, you know, inquiry leaving number. I'd hit the phones close to calling. Yeah, yeah, look they sent us a note
about something. So I call and are in two months in someone board and that We're like yeah, and we it was just the three of us, so fill it and me for at least eighty months, I reckon. And we had our jobs for quite a while.
Yeah. How long after that?
Probably around eighty months. Yeah.
Maybe do you all leave at the same time.
No, I feel Phil went a bit earlier because we had another app template business as well at the time, was selling app ten plates. He went to sort of work on that as getting a bit more money. We had an email business called Sendicate.
Did you have like starter mail or something?
Yeah, and then we had smarter mail as well. So, like I said, we had lots of these things, and then it was bloody hard. We were putting our own money in for two years. I reckon, we have lots of you know, I didn't have much money. We just had a job. So we we were funding this marketplace development. We hired one dev. Maybe we had a sort of agency for a year. Then we hired one dev so it was probably our first hire. Then it's the customer support and it was so hard and it was like
maybe two and a half years in. It was nowhere near scale. We hadn't raised money and we were like at breaking point. And there's this discussion is like do we just try and sell this?
Wow?
Do we raise money? And I'm like this, this can be big, this could be a thing. I remember, and there's a discussion of like okay, one of us will go and try and sell the business, and I'll go and try and raise money.
And whoever comes back first, whoever.
Gets the deal first. And so I went out. I'm like right, and I just hit up every founder of a big e comm business I could find in Australia on LinkedIn and cold email.
Wow back to the cold email.
Oh hell yeah, yeah, I love it. And so we went cold I went to like probably twenty big e commerce founders you know, Russel and Cogan and you know, and we had one reply and that was from Jeremy's same you know, with that Oh my God, and that was it, so.
I could one because that's the one that works.
It was a reply and it was a no. It was like oh yeah, and you were like, yeah, yeah, it was nice, nice little business. But he said, oh, we don't invest, we just buy them and you're probably not at scale anyway. Oh, no worries, you know, We're keep in touch. And then he pinned me a few few months later like how's it going, And we'd grown a bit and I'm like, oh, you know, we we were doing the first time I spoke to him, we were doing maybe six thousand bucks a month and we
were like twenty or something. So it's starting to grow because the Age had written about us. So we tripped from that. It's like, oh, okay, all right, and then we had a call and then yeah, and then Adam and Jeremy were interested and they came on. And meanwhile, like, no one was interested in buying this. Here was a loss making market, and they came on and yeah, so they came on as our first kind of angel investors.
That was three years in i'd say twenty fifteen, and that was amazing because suddenly we had money to scale and it wasn't our money and we could like actually do stuff, yeah, be full time. But again that was like I was working this job at out where, and I loved that job. There was the only job I've ever had. I loved.
I'm like, yeah, I don't want to leave. I'm good at this.
I'm finally good at something I like. And I was just there's another thing, is like, is this a huge mistake? You know? Like, but yeah, we did, I did leave, we did go full time and it's gone. Yeah, it's gone. Wilson's Oh my gosh.
I mean I can't believe that even three years in and after having left your jobs, you still had moments of like do we just get rid of this?
Like is this yeah? Yeah? Ament it was like yeah, you're still like might not be like tech startup takes so much money and yeah, it's just so hard.
You only hear about them really, like they come into your consciousness when it's like Unicorn sold for blah blah blah, and it's like you forget, even three years into a business, you still didn't know it was going to be successful. Like that's extraordinary and that you've got to know first from here. I love that the whole theme of this episode is no is not actually a no. Just keep just keep trying, just be impressible.
We got, you know, like ten silences in one no.
Focus on the no's better than zero zero crickets. Yeah, but I think that's that is also reassuring that, yeah, it doesn't again even business is that now you look at I mean, you made like a sixty thousand dollars sale on the website I was reading about from the person who didn't believe you could make a one thousand dollars sale, like that's absolutely outrageous, But that in that same business you have literally considered closing before and not just like six months in, but like three years in
before pivotal things happen. And I think it is sometimes just keeping the faith between the pivotal things that happen that do keep you alive until you know, you get your momentum. So you mentioned the age, how did you? Because I think the buzz and like, it's all well and good to have an amazing idea, but it's actually communicating that to people that gets it over the line. How did you launch? Like how did you get people to firstly, because you didn't have an equivalent to say
where the better version of blah. You kind of the first people who have done this. I feel like educating. Like when we started Matchup, people didn't know what that was. So it's not just like why are we good, It's like, what is the thing that we're selling. There's a lot of education around that. Did you do word of mouth? Was it trying to get placements in newspapers because it's
e comm Was it mainly seo? Like how were you kind of getting the word out to make, you know, it into what it has become?
Yeah?
So you just cold call everyone and any random number.
A lot of cold emailing of journalists. That first Age article was yeah, tweeted the journalist Max Mason at the Age because he'd written about art. I'm like, oh, you should check out us. So that was a tweet and a d M and then a follow up cold email.
So yeah, it was a lot of cold I'd love that you're such an ambassador for a cold email. Yeah.
Yeah. Well then I started an email company, smart Males, so yeah I did.
Like, yeah, well paid back in so many ways, really good ROI.
Yeah, like pr is did work in the early.
Days for us, Like you had an agency outsourced no we did it, like yeah, like yeah, just you're amazing.
I'm not literally, I just like sending lots of emails. So yeah, like we found we thought we were too small, we couldn't pay people in the early days. Look, let's just send some founder emails or whatever. But it's sort of the artist stories are interesting, Like most of our artists are not in kind of like a high end gallery, but you know, the ones that get momentum find massive success on us and like we'll quit a job they
don't like and become full time artists. And you know, we started tracking these like incredible stories of these artists who you know, had managed to go full time in their career and be super successful and like.
Because of you guys.
Yeah, like because because they can connect to the collectors directly through us, because we had to be collectibates. So those stories, you know, really moved me, you know, because I'm like I always wanted that for my music and never got there, and I like love I love seeing that for artists, like I really do, and like they you know, they always sort of touched me, like moves me a lot, and so I'm like, well, why don't we tell pr you know why don't we pr these?
So that was good for us, like that was a good storytelling thing. And then it was like good old SEO, like we're a marketplace and feel my co founder he's good at sort of the technical marketing stuff, and he used to like lurk on some.
Funny old buch.
This horrible black hat marketing blog. What was it called Warrior Forum or something just yeah, just these guys forums.
Yeah, no, and cold emails lurking for um just tweet random. I love it.
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, So we just we never thought we'd be able to raise money, and he just thought, we're going to have to work this ship out on our own. So he worked out se O and and at work we'd get external se O people to kind of do our on page s O for us, so show us we're a keyword gaps all that stuff. You know, you just find someone like what should we be optimizing for what blog post? Yeah? Yeah, And so that long
term that that's worked really well. So now you know, we have a really strong SEO kind of channel and as a markplace, it's really important. So now we're in a good position for that. They were the two channels, Yeah.
I love the I really do love the cold call recurring so often in this because I think again that whole siloing or self selecting yourself out of things because you don't think you meet the criteria for something. I think some people think, oh, but they're connected, they know Adam or they know whatever, and he knows this, and
it's like you didn't know him at the start. You made that relationship because you just yeah, because you literally send a DM and I think, like, yeah, sure you've got nine no's, but all you need is one warmer note. But like, it's true the amount of times that I have made networks that now people will assume that I got something because I was friends with this person, that the relationship did begin because of a cold email. And you just have to kind of a not be scared
that you'll get a know or dead silence. What's the worst that can happen? You feel silif for five minutes and b like there's always a chance that they'll say Yes, people are interested, they're really interested in what other people are doing, and if they do hear a good idea, people love to be involved in that kind of stuff. And you've got a fifty to fifty chance that it'll be yes, So why would you not just take the risk?
The email takes two seconds, and the amount of tized people have surprised me and come back and said yes when they didn't know, like now we're friends. But at the time, I'm like, sometimes you just have to give people a chance to take a chance on you.
Absolutely, And if you're kind of specific with ask, what I've found is people you know, important, powerful whatever, like doer type, CEOs, whatever. These these people often do want to help. You know, they've been in your position trying to get something off the ground, And if you're kind of specific, you'll be surprised how often these people want to help.
Yeah, I agree. I think it's a big part of the entrepreneurial sort of attitude is you pay it forward to people who are, you know, earlier on in their journey, because that is how everyone learns. It's through like incidental mentors, and so there's a willingness there. It's just you do have to ask, and you're right, you do have to ask in the right way. So I also think sometimes saying will you be my mentor is like, well, no,
no one has time to be your blanket. Mentor even though I really wanted that, I wanted the simplicity of that. That kind of email doesn't normally work. But if you say, I know that you're a specific expert in this and this is what I'm struggling with in my business, could you give me a couple of pointers on that thing, They're going to go, Yeah, that's exactly you know, my expertise. So that's a really good point. Is like, formulate the cold email in a clever way.
Specific you general that night.
Yeah, going to make it easy for that. So now, I mean, you guys have gone from not like you said, not knowing what that you'd ever get investors or that how well we're gone. That comes back to the staircase thing that you weren't jumping through hurdles that were ten years down the track yet you were just focusing on the next thing. And that's a beautiful way way to operate. But you have just launched in the US. Tell us about where you're at now, Like, what's what's blue thumb
doing now? What are your big goals and projects and hopes and dreams.
Yeah, well, yeah, so we've launched blue thumb art dot Com in the US, So you know, we're a dot com. Dot are you here? And you know.
We's a dot com.
Thirteen years later, we are finally, we're finally into the USA. You know. It's the world's biggest art market. Yeah, but it's it's the most competitive as well. But the funny thing is we a lot of our bigger artists already sell quite a lot there, just not through us. You know, we have like a strong loyalty with our artists. You know, we sort of we measure our net promoter score that's high, you know. But you know, we haven't had this good
USA experience. We haven't been selling much there, you know, because it's just this dot AU in Australian dollars. So yeah, we've launched the dot com. We've got one person in the USA as well, you actually have stuff. Yeah, We've got someone there, which is cool and hopefully I'll get there in a month or two to kind of see the lay of the land and say hello, Yeah, so that's all happening and now it's just a matter of
It's funny. It's like, because we've been at this for quite a long time, you actually do forget the initial stuff that you did, Like all the small bits, you know, the beginning, the little things doing every day you're completely forgotten.
So you especially.
I'm a goldfish. So yeah, we're back to that, Like we need to assume no one knows us or cares.
You know.
What we do is we have some great art already, but we don't have the buyers. So it's yeah, it's it's close to zero to one again, you know, it's er point one to one now.
So yeah, chairman though, to see if you can do it all again.
It's exciting. Yeah, And we've always, like I said, we always had a chip on our shoulder about a technology company in h you know, people aren't doing this the right way. They need to focus on better tech for artists and ignore them.
Like what's the masses?
Yeah, like what the norm is in the art industry. The art industry sucks. The industry is opaque. It makes you yeah, yeah, it's like it's not there to benefit artist. It's not even there to benefit most collectors. You know, it's there to make them feel like shit, So no.
More.
Yeah, I don't know, squeeze money out of the top of it sucks. So like, you know, we sort of driven by a bit of a chip on the shoulder there to kind of make it into something. Yeah, so yeah, it's exciting.
Okay, so big takeaways chip on your shoulder, cold calling, winging it, getting lots of nose. No, I really, I really love that it hasn't all been you know what so many big tech founders. It's not the same narrative. It's not like I was a you know, playing with computers since I was zero, and I always wanted to be in tech, but I also always knew art. It was the combination of my passion of my profession. I love that it's like none of it is conventional and
that's such a great story. How do you now? And especially now that you have two beautiful children? A big part of seizing your yea is like, once you find a meaningful job, and particularly one that is doing such beautiful things for other artists like you get I'm sure so much gratification from watching their stories. How do you switch off? Do you find joy in work? Firstly, would you say you love your job now? And what do you do outside of work that's kind of allows you
to switch off? Especially now that you're back in that hustle mode, Like, how do you switch off? And just what are the things that help make you forget what time it is or that forget you to do list?
So yeah, I do love my job. Like I feel very lucky that I wake up and it feels like you know, the day after high school finished, when you can do anything.
You know, that feeling like shit's.
Finished and I can do whatever the hell I want?
Sits so much.
Yeah, I can now do whatever like it's done.
Awesome.
I still feel like that. I still feel like I'm which on school.
Do you know what? That's actually such a good description. I feel like that every day too. I'm like I can do whatever I want and it's my work. Yeah, that's amazing.
Yeah, like this mostly how I feel. Obviously I feel terrible a lot when there's stress and all this stuff, but like I yeah, I just have.
That feeling of you for twenty four hours and then.
I just feel lucky that I can we can have an idea and go and do it like it's amazing. Like, so yeah, I do love that. How do I switch off? I used to drink too much nice, so that was that was a good fun switch Yeah, it was. It was fun until until you have little kids and then it's no longer fun having a hangover.
No, I haven't even risked it because I'm like, there's it's already hard, dead sober.
So No. I used to love, like, you know, going out to the pub with friends and stuff, so that I don't do that. I read. I like reading.
We still play bass in trombone?
No, no, you don't at all. They're under the bed, the instruments. I'm fairly like one track. Like I can kind of only do one thing at a time with my life, and at the moment that's building companies. Yeah, I just can't.
It's interesting because you can build multiple companies, I feel, like different businesses, but you can't. Yeah that's really coo.
Yeah so yeah, that's sort of unfortunately. Like and you know, every year I write a list of stuff I want to work on or build or whatever. Like that's actually been a big thing for me. That did change my life as well. Back in twenty twelve, I wrote my first you know, list of what I want to get out of the year, and one of them was like, you know, start a company. And then I've looked back. I keep that list in my Apple Notes. I've looked back and I found I've actually done a lot of
the stuff I wrote down one days. Normally it would take two or three years. Normally it'll be like from two years ago, I've finally achieved it. But just writing it down and having it there, not even looking at much is actually helped to me.
I do that every year as well. I think resolutions get a really bad rap, but I find they are a really nice way to track your even if they change that way through the year. Just track your thinking and your goals and whether you get there or.
Yeah, yeah, yeah and so. But on that for like five years, I had, oh yeah, I start another band, and that's I've never been able to do that one. Yeah, I've been able to do a lot of the others. So no, I'm I like playing with my hanging out with my family, Like I've got two kids, and yeah, it's great. Is that a lot to life?
Yeah, I feel like you don't really get what I personally have found. And I don't know people with two or like more than one. I'm like, you're actually a superhuman that they are kind of my joy, Like Teddy is my joy. That is playing, that is my play. I don't kind of need to do the same types of play activities at the moment because I do them playing with him. Is that whereas before I need to read or like going, you know, do an activity to kind of help me switch off. But they are such
good time wasters. Yeah, it just that makes me forget what time it is because you're so consumed in being
with them, which is so cute. How would you say, just as a last question, I feel like a lot of people's journey is kind of consumed the idea of being successful, and like we've already mentioned success and failure and use those words about them around and I feel like it's it becomes a lot of the metric that people use to measure their life and happiness and fulfillment and do you like your job and do you enjoy
what you do? Don't really come into it until later in the piece, which is a real shame because I think you can get on this hamster wheel and not jump off often until you know, sometimes it's quite late in your life. Do you feel successful? What do you consider is success? And has that changed?
So like, yeah, objectively I should feel successful. And you know there's that quote of like remember when you're desperately wanted all the things you have now, so like I can try and reason that, yeah, you're doing well, but nah, really yeah, I just you.
Don't feel it. Nah you look at the stage, you have some crazy metrics.
Yeah, like no, I well yeah, I sort of.
It's already making you so uncomfortable. Is that a humility thing?
I think? Like I was talking to someone the other day and it was like, should be bigger than it is. Yeah, we're not. We're not. This is not where it should be. And no, I don't know.
Just is that the fire that keeps you alive? Though? Some people need that that drive for the next thing that comes out of dissatisfaction with the present.
If you're a therapist, that would probably say, you need to know, you need to realize you're enough.
Wow, you are extraordinarily objectively successful.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm super lucky. Like I do feel very lucky that I've got you know, what we've built, and also like a really great team. I like going to work with these people like that. You know, we've got people who are a lot better than all their jobs than I am for this stuff, which is great. No, it's really actually it's awesome. So I feel super lucky. That we've got this and that we you know, have been able to kind of build this also for our artists.
But nah, I just know I feel like, yeah, we're not We're not where we should be, and yeah, there's a lot to do.
Yeah wow, Well in that case, in five ye is time, we'll do another episode. We'll check in and see if you are your metrics for that are they financial? Are they numbers of like is there a particular number of users or a number of sales? Like do you have an idea what that looks like where you would be like tick? Or will it just be this moving goalpost?
Don't? Yeah, I'm sure.
I love that. Nice. Well, congratulations on everything. Do you know what's next? Or just the US? Just focus on Yeah that not just the US, I mean the US. That's an enormous market.
Actually two things, so I should mention we've got I mentioned an art podcast, So we've we've launched our podcast, which I'm loving because I'm learning about art and intoing interesting art collectors, which you've been on Sarah and not an.
Art collector, but I know I thoroughly enjoyed link the episode that we did.
That was a great chat. But the something that we launched this week actually was print on demand, so all of our artists now can sell prints of that's all of their originals through us. Yeah, so that's kind of that's a super cool thing. And like we built this kind of interesting AI upscaler to kind of make them super high res. So you've been working with the printing company for a year to get really really high resolution prints. Yeah, on like a really thick, nice stock. So yeah, that's cool.
That went live this week, So that's a.
Bit gradual thing. Yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah, and you know it's like we look at our analytics a lot and Prince is top ten search term on us in your own yeah yeah yeah yeah, so so that that it's also cool as well as obviously the USA, which is like the big build. Yeah.
Oh congratulations. And for everyone who's listening, I mean, if you haven't, most people actually that I've mentioned this podcast too already have bought from Blue Thumb, which is so cool. I'm like, oh, this is amazing, Like you know the guy from Blue sum They're like, yes, I buy from there. So most of you probably already you don't need the link, but I will put the link to Blue Thumb in the show notes just in case as well as the podcast. George, thank you so much for joining USAT, such a cool
human doing amazing things. And if you don't already know Blue Thumb or haven't already purchased, although I think many of you probably have or have at least heard of them, it is an incredible place to source artwork and find new artist and was particularly amazing for us when we were first renovating and decorating the house. I will include links in the show notes as well as to George's pages, along with my episode on his podcast too, which was
an absolute delight to record. It was also so lovely to bond over having kids at a similar age and hearing about the fatherhood of his life as well. He's just such a lovely person, incredibly almost painfully humble about how successful he's been, but I guess that's all the
more endearing. I hope you guys enjoyed. If you did, please as always share the episode, spreading the yighborhood, growing it as far and wide as possible, and leave us a review and hit the subscribe button if you haven't already. One of my resolutions this year is to remind you guys to do that more. If you have a second, I would be so grateful, But otherwise I hope you are having an amazing week and seizing your yay