EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Well, welcome back to Things. Reasons. This is the Independent podcast. This is the show where you hear what’s not being said on stage. 

It’s the conversation after the meeting when people drop the script and they say exactly what they think, which is what we are gonna do. Uh, we talk about drivers shaping Australian it tech shifts, talent gaps, budget pressure, vendor plays, leadership calls, and of course all the reasons behind them. And I’m of course here with you Jono Staff. 

There’s somebody else here, but I’m gonna talk to you first. What have you been up to this week? 

Mate, it’s been a huge week and, uh, it’s interesting that we’re recording this episode today. Uh, yesterday. I was busy figuring out how to do my first LinkedIn newsletter. Right, right. Don’t wanna say too much about it. 

Okay. Okay. There, there were some problems, but we, we got it out there.  

Look, I mean, we, we do get a lot of help with these things. I’d like to think that the instructions were clear. I don’t know what went wrong there, but I mean, we did figure it out in the end. It was early. I’m gonna give you that. Right. I dunno whether it was pre-coffee for you, but we got it done. 

Yeah. Look, I’m not a rooster mate.  

Okay. Alright. But yeah, it was a big day yesterday, right? It was a big day. Big day.  

It was, it was huge. Yeah. We, we launched. Yep. We’re, we’re out there. We’re official. The response has been great. It’s very encouraging. Mm Uh, so encouraging that we decided to, to record another one. 

Right. So here we are today.  

Here we are. Now we should probably get into it ’cause we do have somebody else sitting here. Yeah, I dunno if you’ve noticed. We do. Alright. 

Today we are joined by James Henderson. He’s the editorial director at Moxie Insights. Welcome to Things. Reasons. 

Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate you having me.  

Absolutely.  Pleasure to have you on. Great, you. Now let’s give you a little bit of an intro. All right. So James is the editorial director at Moxie Insights. He’s spent his career  

turning complex texts and and business trends into stories that leaders pay attention to. Covering everything from AI investment in Australia digital strategy in Singapore. 

When he is not shaping executive conversations, you’ll likely find him running the streets of Singapore. It sounds like a very humid place to go running, uh, using the miles to clear his head and to sharpen his perspective. He’s usually on the other side of the table doing the interviews. This is the first time he’s actually been the interviewee. 

Is that true?  

It is true. And it might not go very well. I’m not sure how interesting I am so we’ll find out. We’ll find out. Well, listen, welcome James. Happy to have you here. Thank you. I really appreciate it guys. And congrats on the launch of the podcast. Awesome.  

Thanks very much. Thank you. Yeah, I, I’m, I’m really excited about this one. 

Uh, it’s a little bit different actually, you know, when we’re, when we’re talking about doing this, um, it’s bit, bit of, uh, self-interest here because Naran and I are super curious about B2B media and, and how it all works. And I think a lot of people, uh, in the tech industry are 

Yes.  

Right. So we’re gonna blow it wide open today. 

We’re gonna blow it wide open. Remember previous conversation we had is that, you know, people like you and I, perhaps, I don’t know, other people are kind of making things up as they go. I know with this podcast we’ve certainly been doing that. There’s a bit of that. Maybe we’ve got a real professional here who can tell us what to do this time. 

No, I’m the same. I’ve just been doing it longer. Okay.  

Right. Yeah. Okay. Alright, fantastic. Well let’s get into it. Let’s go.   

Alright, cool. Good. All right. I dunno why I’m saying welcome. It’s not my host. It’s not my show. It’s okay. Go again. No. Do you know what? Just force a habit. Yeah. I’m always the one doing the welcoming. I’m like, welcome. It’s, yeah, it’s not. Yeah, it guys, welcome to my podcast. 

Sorry. Slap in the face. I didn’t even notice. I did it twice. Leave it. Okay. Go. It’s, I dont care. He take,  

he’s taken over the pod. Look at him. You sitting, it’s great. Fine. Ready? 

We good all?  

Try not  

to laugh. You almost did it again. I know. I’m like, nah, it is good.  

Alright, so let’s get into it then. Okay. What’s on the table now? You and I can see what’s on the table. 

Nobody else can. That’s deliberate, of course. So Jono, what is on the table today? What are we talking about?  

Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. This term that gets thrown around a lot. Mm-hmm. In our industry, uh, we’re probably guilty, uh, of it as well. Mm-hmm. But this term thought leadership,  

is that what this is? 

Well, I think we’ve gotta explore that today with James. Thought leadership, I feel like it’s an overused term. What does it really mean? Uh, is it ridiculous? Does it hold any value? Uh, you know, what does it actually look like? And, uh, and. And how do we spot it? Right. And I know, um, James has some, some strong views on this. 

Mm-hmm. And James, we’d love to hear from you, uh, obviously a, a bit about maybe the catalyst for launching Moxie Insights and, and your views on this thought leadership thing.  

Yeah. And on thought leadership. In principle, I’m a fan of it, but then I’ll, i’ll do the caveat alright. But I, I’m, I’m a fan with the, the idea behind it, but I just feel like it’s probably been hijacked a little bit and it’s a little bit overused. 

It’s like. One of those where if you have to say you’re something that’s probably not what you are flexing. So if you’re walking around saying you’re a thought leader, it’s probably ’cause you’re not a thought leader. We’ve never done that. So just be one. No. So there’s a little bit of that, but when we launched Moxie, it was actually really, especially from my side as editorial, it was really from a content standpoint, which I know we’re gonna get into today, but really just that quality, authentic content, which I think if you do that in the right way. 

With depth, with originality, then you actually can actually deliver good thought leadership. But as I mentioned, the caveat is there’s a lot of surface level self-serving type of content out there that’s branded as thought leadership. So I’m on the fence on it.  

Mm.  

I agree with it in principle, but in practice it’s not very well done.  

On the fence.You mentioned, um, you mentioned authenticity. I think, uh, I think that’s something. Naran and I are, are, are pretty passionate about and, and something we’re trying to bring into the industry with, with this show. And that is sort of getting under the covers and just, just, uh, getting back to, back to the real, the real thing that we’re all trying to do. 

I mean the fact that you guys have launched this and what the industry, I dunno, 20, 30, 40 years and there’s never been something like this. And I’m saying that as a media person is credit to you guys, but also highlights the distinct lack of authenticity that is in the market from a content standpoint. 

So it’s great that you guys are the first, but it’s also alarming that you actually are the first  

probably. Yeah.  

Yeah, that’s, um, I dunno if you’ve ever thought about it that way before. No, we don’t think, no, we didn’t think about it like that. I think what, uh, what prompted us to start to explore this space was, uh, I think, I think we sat around and we said, you know, we’re actually sick of the fluff. 

Exactly. Yeah.  

Right. There’s, there’s a, there’s a lot of fluff out there. What are we actually trying to do in tech? We’re trying to, you know, improve people’s lives and do good business and do smart things and, and innovate and find better ways of, of, of helping people. With tech. That’s, I mean, that, that’s my view as a technologist. 

But you don’t, um, you don’t often see a lot of people explaining exactly how they do that and, uh, and why it’s important and, and just bringing that with some authenticity.  

And depth. Right. Actually, if you’re gonna make a point, make it, explain it. Outline the, the, the logic behind it. The reasons doesn’t really matter what the point is, in my opinion. 

It’s, it could go either way. We’re coming at it from an objective standpoint, but if you do it. If you actually structure your argument, whatever that may be, or your position and you actually get into it and your reasons why. I think that’s where I’m coming at. It’s doesn’t matter if you, if you’re going one way or the other in a, from a tech standpoint, it’s the actual bit behind it is more important. 

Yeah. You know what, we, we talk about this, you know, when we interview people, uh, one of the key questions I like to ask is like, would I buy from you? And it has nothing to do with the product or my need or anything like that. It comes across, uh, it’s, it’s how you come across to me. Correct. Right. And so does somebody leave you feeling positive? 

Do you feel like you’re endeared to them? Do you feel like they were genuine? Like was it a healthy conversation? And these are the things that I’m, I’m trying to pick up on, right. Because I know that with a candidate, if it, if it doesn’t rub off on me properly, how’s it gonna go with prospects, et cetera? 

Correct. And that, so that’s really what I go looking for there. Yeah.  

And, and, and looking at some of the guests that you’ve had on from a tech standpoint, some of them are at different sides of the market, but you can’t question their authenticity and their, their understanding of where they’re at and and how they’re positioning themselves. 

And I think that’s all you can actually ask for when you’re having those as, because as you mentioned, it’s kind of a people conversation to be honest. Yeah. And as long as you’ve got that authenticity, I think then you’ve got the biggest part sorted.  

Yeah.  

Yeah, I think that’s right. And you know. In our industry and, and B2B media. 

It, uh, you and I were talking about, uh, before this that, um, that they’re kind of, they are two separate industries, but they’re intrinsically linked and yeah, it was a really interesting observation. Say, well, okay, B2B media in tech is sort of, you said you felt a bit like you’re on the outside looking in. 

I’m not. This is your industry. I’m, I’m not, I’m not techie. I’m, I’m in, I’m a media person, so it just happens to be the industry I’m in is tech. It used to be sport, it was business. So look, it’s great and we can get into that, but it’s, I, I always think we’re one step removed and I also think we should be as well. 

Yeah. Because we’re not actually in, in the industry from a tech standpoint.  

Mm.  

So it gives you a different lens, but.  

Yeah, yeah. How does it actually work? Maybe, maybe you can, uh, take our listeners who are, I think most of our listeners are, um, within the tech industry. There might be some media people, uh, following, but tell it, tell us how it actually works. 

How do you think it works?  

Well, I don’t know. I mean, we filled in, we pumped everybody with newsletters yesterday. You know, there’s, our pictures have blasted all over YouTube and LinkedIn, and so I think our approach is good luck avoiding us. That is one approach. That one approach. Uh, look, I mean, I joke of course, um, it’s an interesting question because, um, I think Jono and I kind of approached this in that, you know, we we’re trying to build personal brand. 

Yeah. And we’re trying to do that with openness and integrity and, um, we work very hard to be exactly the same as we would be sitting in a bar or a cafe having conversations. And if we had a prospect or a customer sitting next to us, there’s no difference to how we speak. Mm. We speak exactly the same way. 

I mean, we had, um, a guest on recently that is a customer, and we, we spoke to him exactly the same way on the podcast as I would. Anywhere. Right? And so why does there have to be a difference? And the only thing that really changes is the topic. And perhaps, you know, if a customer’s talking about their needs, you play it back to them in what you can do. 

Um, there’s no agenda beyond that. Mm-hmm. Right? And so that’s, that’s how it works for me. Jono, I don’t know whether it’s different for you.  

No, I think, I think that’s right. Like I’ve, um, I’ve got some observations. You know, I, I, I follow and, and keenly read a, a lot of the B2B publications that, that comment on the tech industry. 

Um, I, I get my news from lots of different sources. Yeah. So I think, um, I think there’s definitely value there. I, I certainly value the commentary and, and being able to stay up to date, but, uh, but I am starting to get more curious around what drives different media organisations to comment or, or, or get involved in certain things? 

And what’s the public interest angle when it comes to B2B? Like how do you decide what is interesting and what is not like the, these are the things that I think a lot of people in our industry don’t really have exposure to.  

Yeah. And do you know, I just realised there, sorry, gents, so I was interviewing you there. 

I should really just, you can do that. Be the guest. I was just sat there going, this is your first time. Okay. Sorry guys. Sorry guys. I felt like I wanted to give you a good answer, but pressure. You know,  

it, it’s so funny though, on the media side, like everyone thinks it’s such a like a dark art and it’s not really when you strip it back, like just from, from my side in B2B. 

So I was in sport for a long time in the uk, moved over, kind of fell into tech, uh, journalism and, and worked for the biggest B2B media, you know, titles in the world and now, now doing my own. But when I was, when I was there, and it’s still the case now. There’s a lot of, it’s, it’s amazing how, and I, I say this, that we’re one step out of the the industry because it’s true. 

Your industry’s evolving all the time. If we would’ve sat here three years ago, you’d have been talking about something else. True. Sat here in six months, it’ll be an evolution of whatever it is the topic is today. Yeah. It’s never been that in B2B media. There’s never been a change. It’s been the same since really day one. 

And what I mean by that is you’ve got other platforms now like LinkedIn. You’ve got your own platforms. You don’t need to rely on third party media as much, you can do your own. Right, right. Maybe, maybe 10, 15 years ago you could technically have done it, but no one really did. And what that’s talked to me about and, and one of the reasons why we launched Moxie was, is the actual content value that these traditional B2B media platforms are creating. 

And I would, I would question it with, with respect, but I, I would question it in that if you ask how it works, essentially how it works on a very surface level is you have all these publications if we just take Australia as an easy example, you have all these publications hitting one segment of the audience, whether it’s the end user in the C-Suite, whether it’s the channel, whether it’s the vendor side, whether it’s government, telco, whatever it may be. 

They all kind of have the, their little lens. Then essentially it’s just a daily grind on the, on the press release front. So you’ve basically got three or four journalists sat in a, I’d say a newsroom, but it’s not really a newsroom anymore ’cause there’s not that type of debate. It’s really a shared document with a pool of who’s writing about Macquarie, who’s doing the Macquarie press release, who’s doing the Microsoft one, who’s doing the Dell one, and. 

It got to a point where you’re just creating this commodity copy and paste content, which look, there’s a good argument for getting news out and being a notice board for the community so that you know, people moving jobs, people acquiring people, you’re getting customer wins, all good that you need that, but there’s never anything else underneath it. 

So you’ve got, you know, anywhere between four or five publications to pot, potentially even 10, all competing to copy and paste the same content three minutes quicker and then blast out a newsletter to a database that hasn’t really opened any of those newsletters for years probably, and just is a dormant user. 

So that has been going on for many years. It was going on when I was there. And they’re still trying to create this, it’s basically eyeballs. As much as, and I know you were joking about it, but it’s essentially how much content can we spray out on a daily basis? Yeah. If, can we get. The ideal would, can we get eight to 10 stories out a day stories in, in, in inverted commas because they’re essentially press releases with soft editing. 

How can we get that out? How can we blast or copy and paste that on LinkedIn? How can we blast two newsletters around that and hopefully just generate enough traffic? We don’t care which story it comes on. We don’t care if it’s only, you know, in some of my old roles, the, the average time on a, on a story was 10 seconds. 

Wow. 10 seconds that counts, by the way, that’s a view, you know, scan the headline and sometimes, you know, if you write the story right, you might only need to do that, but. My, my point is it was just all this surface level content, which there’s a, there’s a role for that, don’t get me wrong, but when we were launching Moxie, and what I see with what you guys are doing is I actually think sometimes you’ve gone too far the other way and it’s very commodity and it’s quite hard to get anything that’s of substance and of depth. 

So when you were talking about thought leadership before, for me that’s depth it’s actually authenticity, originality, and really getting into the roots of whatever it is. That there’s no platform for that at the minute. I don’t believe in B2B media in Australia, which is why you’re seeing, you know, people like yourselves do your own podcast where you can actually get into things, you can have control over it. 

LinkedIn as well being the same. That’s a platform people can use. So I’m, yeah, I’m not as, uh you know, I used to be positive about it. I’m not, I mean, look, it’s employed me for a long time, so I need to be respectful of it, but it’s, I just think it hasn’t evolved. It hasn’t moved the pace. It’s very old school in how it thinks. 

It’s very old school in how it operates, and I just think the industry’s moved on. People have moved on. But the B2B and as a group is, is not really moved on.  

Well, so, um, clearly podcasts generally as a medium have grown massively in popularity. Yeah, right. I mean, you look at some of the big podcasters, the Joe Rogans of this world. 

Correct. Who’s the other guy that we like?  

Uh, I know Sean Ryan, Sean Ryan. He’s popular too. Right?  

Massive, massive audiences that eclipse like the MSNBCs of this world, et cetera. I think people perhaps. Enjoy a long form conversation. Well, yeah. How long’s Joe Rogans? Two, three hours? It’s as long as it needs to be three hours. 

Yeah. Right. It’s as long as it needs to be. A hundred percent. Yeah. 

You get to plenty of time to form your views and correct positions. Yeah. And state your, your, your insights or whatever it is. Right. And I think. It’s ama it’s amazing to me actually, because if attention spans are shortening right, you get the, a long form conversation like that. 

Like how does that work? 

I, I disagree. My attention span isn’t shortened. Right. It’s just what I value. Right? Deep focus. If I focus, if I, if I, if I value something, I’ll spend hours watching it or reading it or consuming it. So I don’t know. I think when, when people say attention spans, I’m attention spans on your thing. 

They’re not interested in whatever you are saying. Okay. Got it. That’s a difference in my, in my opinion.  

No, no, that works. I mean, we spoke about that at breakfast this morning, right? It’s like, if you are, yeah, thanks for the invite, by the way. I’m not sore about that at all. Sorry. I’m over it. I’m over it. 

Um, but it’s like, you know, deep focus on the things that we’re interested in. Yeah. And absolutely none for those that we’re not.  

Yeah. And, and by the way, and then the people that are consuming this, they might, and the other thing with B2B media is they, there’s this thought that, you know, they’d go around saying, we have thousands of subscribers and opt-in, first party data and all this. 

That’s all great, but it’s a, it’s almost, they think they, you have to read every bit of content that is ever created. When, I’m not sure everyone would potentially watch every episode of this. They might not. Be interested in what I’m saying. So they might not watch, but your next guest they might be very interested in. 

Yeah, that’s right. So even just how people consume contents evolved. Yes. You know, they don’t, you don’t go on a website, whatever your website of choice is to get your daily news and read every single article on there every day.  

What, what’s the antidote to traditional B2B media? You, you’ve got some strong views. 

Uh, strong enough to go, go and start your own thing. Yeah.  

Look, a couple of years I might be back of a team, so who knows? It’s easy to have strong views, but  

Yeah. Like what, what, what’s the antidote?  

No. Do you know what? It’s everyone for themselves, right? And, and there’s. You know, everyone has a, has a right to exist and, and have a role in the market, so that’s all fine. 

We just wanted to go a little bit different with Moxie and, and we built it really on a content play of, you know, I do one or two interviews a week. They’re, they’re long tail. They, they take me a couple of hours. I go to wherever they are. I sit down, I really get into whatever their point is and really get into the nuts and bolts of it. 

Honestly, the, the process of me, uh compiling that it’ll take me up to 10 hours to create that content. And it could be 2000 words, could be 3000 words. I’ve been told, no one reads them. No one cares. Why you doing old fashioned writing. We’re good at writing, we’re good at telling stories. We can get into the, the actual nuts and bolts of things. 

And you know, we’ve got people on our website that are there for seven, eight minutes reading one long form article. Do they read every article? Probably not. ’cause it’s probably the subject person that’s in there. So our antidote is probably similar to what you’ve done to just do our own thing. Yeah. And see if it works. 

Yeah. Yeah.  

Is it working? Yeah.  

So far so good. Yeah, I mean,  

Moxie’s all over LinkedIn, mate. I mean it  

Well, maybe we’re doing the same as you just, you know, spray and pray. I dunno. But no, it’s, it’s, it’s okay. And look, you know what, we, we are respectful that we, we do our thing. People can do their other thing. 

You don’t have to like it, but we just think you can add a bit of value in the content. And back to you what you was saying from a thought leadership standpoint, we are trying to actually genuinely do it.  

I think the, uh, the industry’s really taken to the top minds concept. Oh, for sure. And, and, um, that, that’s, I thought that was quite different. 

Well, it’s, it’s funny ’cause everyone thinks what we’re doing from a top mind standpoint is like an awards. It’s not, it’s like, you know, everyone gets an award. You, you get a prize. It’s, it’s not, which is a very B2B media thing. Right. So handing out like Oprah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a, by the way, that is. Number one for B2B media if you, if you need to get engagement, run awards. 

Run awards. Everyone loves winning. Yeah, yeah. You wanna, you wanna get 300 people in the room, run an awards program. You get everybody everywhere. Not difficult at all. Exactly. Yeah. But on the top minds, the logic there was, and again, I’m one step removed from the, I might know media, but I don’t know tech. So what we wanted to do with Top Minds was get CEOs, founders, MDs, CIOs, CTO, CISOs, and just get them, it’s community created content. 

Mm-hmm. So ask them, well. You guys are living and breathing it in the market, what do you see? And, and actually we are being more of an editorial vehicle to get that insight out there, rather than us, you know, sitting behind a screen, as I said, copy and pasting, press releases without any knowledge of the market. 

It’s actually engaging the industry as much as we can to say, well, your thoughts on this, Jono is X, Y, and Z. Great. We can amplify that and, and do it that way. So, yeah, it’s so far, so good. Mm-hmm.  

Yeah. Alright. Well I, I think, um, I. If you think about LinkedIn here for a second, right? So I think, you know, genuine content, honest content, you know, the kind of conversations that you and I have, et cetera. 

You know, you and I value that. I think partly because we enjoy having the conversation so much. I’m looking forward to a day on LinkedIn. Even everybody, like when they leave a job and they say, amazing people, my boss was incredible, et cetera. Where’s the truth behind that? You know that there’s So Why’d you leave them? 

Yeah. Why’d you leave them? Well, I, I, I’m looking forward to the day where I read when I said, I hate these people, my boss was a Yeah, I didn’t write that swear on this podcast. 

I, I just said, I’ve resigned. I didn’t write anything bad or anything Good. Right.  

Yeah. So I don’t know, like maybe there’ll be an evolution of that too, with the fullness of time. 

Like an authenticity. Uh, maybe it’s a revolution. Yeah, exactly. Maybe that’s what’s needed. I think so. Who’s gonna go first? Yeah, right. Don’t know Yeah, I think, uh, I think that’s right. Like, and, and you mentioned telling stories. You know, I’m a, I’m a huge fan of the storytelling format. Um, I, I love concepts like the Hero’s Journey Yeah. 

And these kinds of things. And I find it a really effective way to, um, to get your point across and help somebody that you are, you are speaking with, uh, retain mm-hmm that, that information and, and make it meaningful. Yeah. Um. Do you think our industry is good or bad at telling stories bad for the, for the answer and then I’ll expand. 

Let, let’s help everybody. Yeah. Understand. Yeah. And  

so that’s, I’m answering directly to your, to your point there, but bad’s probably the harsh word, but, uh, what I mean by that is it’s not, it’s not your core role, is it? And, you know, you, you have a day job. Yeah. So that’s, again, back to my point, less, less these days actually less. 

Yeah. You have a day job.  

Wanna say too much about it. Continue.  

But my, my point is it’s not, it shouldn’t be. It’s not a criticism because, you know, and you know, I’ve studied at this at uni for four years and then I’ve done it for like, I do it every day. And I’m not saying I’m good at it. I’m, I’m bad in a lot of areas, but my point is I’m doing it every day and I’m learning from it and, and, and I know what’s working. 

It’s not, and I’m, I’m i’m trying to hold my craft. It’s not your day job, and that’s a really important point for people, I think, to take comfort in that. It’s fine if you can’t, if you feel like you can’t tell a story, but everyone has a story and whatever your story is is worth telling in whatever guise that you feel comfortable. 

And there’s lots of ways you can do it where you don’t have to be a you know, a wordsmith or you have to have this brilliant production and set these things up. I think people think the you gotta be extreme. Yes. How you, how you tell the story. You can’t just tell it.  

Yeah. I agree with that completely. I mean, I, one of my actual day job jobs, Jono, that you are well aware of is, um, I lead a team of principal consultants. 

Mm-hmm. And they’re all customer facing. Yeah. They all do pre-sales work. And they’re all very different. Yeah. Different personality types. They’re not all shiny face show offs like certain people, right? They they are  

Jono. Oh yeah.  

Well, you know, I just happen to be looking that way. But like they, they will endear themselves to a prospect in any number of ways, right? 

Yeah. And they do tell stories. It’ll be through the acumen of the subject matter, their experience, their understanding of the requirement or whatever it is. You’re achieving the same goal. You are telling a story, you’re just doing it your own way. Right. With a little bit more substance perhaps than somebody else who knows. 

Well, well, you, you would hope so, right. I think, um, I think though there are, like, the cool thing that I’ve sort of learned over my career, uh, studying, I guess the science and the art of storytelling is I, I sort of started out with, um, you know, my career was an engineer. Yeah. When I first started doing this caper. 

And the thing that helped me was I took a lot of comfort in the fact that there is a science. Mm-hmm. You know, there, there’s a structure to telling a good story. There’s, there’s a science, and if there’s a science, then it’s written down and it’s something you can learn. Mm-hmm. Correct. Have you got any practical tips for our audience, for people out there who might be thinking about this going, oh, that guy’s just got the gift of the gab. 

That’s not me, but they’ve got a story to tell. How might they go about, um you know, hone, honing that and, and developing that skill.  

Yeah. Uh, a good, good bit of advice. And, and by the way, you can tell stories in different ways, right? I mean, I know we all love LinkedIn, but it’s not the be all and end all right. 

There’s other things out in the world that you can, how you can build a brand and you, as you said, you can build a brand just by speaking with customers on a daily basis. Sure. And have a great network. Yeah. And no one would know about that. But I think one, one thing that. I always got as, as good advice was when we were launching Moxie. 

You know, you’re launching same as you guys, right? You’re trying to get some big hitters on or whatever. You, you wanna start? Well. And then, you know, we go, that’s why you are here. Well, I’m number three, right? So, yeah. Scanning.  

He’s still dark on breakfast. Carry on.  

No, it’s fine. It’s fine, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. 

But we, I, in um, I interviewed a guy called Ash Jones. So he’s founder of a, a company in the UK called Great Influence. And he’s basically was part of the team that built the brand of Steven Bartlett, so Diary of a CEO. So he was helping build that personal brand of him during those early days until the podcast. 

So I interviewed him. Just around personal brands. So I thought that would be a, like a really good way to start and, and something different from a content standpoint. Right. As I mentioned before, a little bit unique and he, his recommendation was Find your fusion. So what he said was. It’s very hard to say something today that hasn’t already been said. 

Mm-hmm. It’s a lot on culture, a lot on team, a lot on a lot of things, AI, whatever it is. And that’s fine, right? It’s just, it’s just the way the market is. So, and you can go down that route, that’s no problem. But if you want to be comfortable to your point, Jono, and do it something in a way that you feel is achievable, find your fusion. 

So link it. So if you are technical, for example, link it to an interest or link it to something you like. So he, he did the exercise on me because I’m actually an introvert. I post because it’s my job. But the personal post actually only started a few years ago because he, he said to me, well, you’ve started your own business. 

You have a responsibility to build your brand, to help your business’ brand if you do it in the right way. So if you start to, and Cherry Yumul, one of our co-founders said this, you know, if you think of it less about you than passing knowledge on, it actually becomes a little bit easier. So when people say, I don’t, I don’t know how to tell my story, I’m a bit nervous behind it, who would wanna hear from me? 

Don’t think of it that way. Think of it as you just passing on your knowledge to someone else who will pick it up and, and it, it really reframes it and the find your fusion is essentially, so the way he did it with me was, okay, I’m in media great, I like running. So he is like, well link it to that then, or now you’re an entrepreneur. 

So link it to that. But I’m more, I’m more inclined on the running side ’cause I I like you like cycling, right? For example. I don’t, so you can find your fusion and then create content that links. So when I’m writing these posts, I’m writing them on my phone while I’m running ’cause I’m like, oh that’s good, I might post it so I’m not having to sit down for a week. And some people do this, right? They sit down and they, they schedule all the posts. I think that’s a little bit hard to do ’cause I don’t. It just should just come out naturally. So I think for people out there that are struggling to tell their story, just link it to something, your interest, interested in. 

Forget everyone else, and you’d be amazed at how much that will resonate because the authenticity will come out. 

I, yeah. Listen, so I wholeheartedly agree. I mean, we study our stats and you know, we, yeah trawl over that human interest and this concept of building your personal brand and it will invariably help your business as well. 

Um, you’ve gotta have trust in being a little bit vulnerable as well. ’cause I think that just goes to honesty and transparency. Transparency, sorry. Which we’ve spoken about. But yeah, like cycling stuff. Right. Human endeavor. I mean, I did my, my race in, in Europe and I put those little videos up of me, right. 

Disheveled and red faced and dried as a husk. And you know, like just pouring your heart out on a video, throw that up, you get like 20,000 views. Yeah.  

And you get a personal connection. Right, right. You know, people always, very rarely people come up and say, great article. They say, oh, how was you run in Singapore? 

Right. Or you looked, you looked, you know, you looked like you were struggling, or you don’t look like you’re a runner. Yeah. So, you know, and, and by the way, that’s just, that’s just me. It doesn’t have to be that we’ve, you know, I speak to you know, we run an event a few weeks ago in, in Malaysia, and, and you know, that culture’s very reserved. 

They’re not going to, they don’t use LinkedIn as much. And we speak to a CIO about, you know, how they build their personal brand, incredibly technical. They’re not culturally inclined that way. So he has got two things against him, right? And I just said, well, what do you actually love doing? I went, I actually love technology. 

I love I love messing about with it. Every night I experiment with it and he’s a CEO CIO. I said, well write about that. Write about what you do in your spare time. If that’s what, if that’s your hobby, write about it. And he’s starting to post and it he, he messaged me the other day. He said, it’s actually easy for me to post ’cause I actually like it and it’s my passion. 

I went, well, yeah, you don’t have to create a story that isn’t your story, it’s yours, whatever it is. Find your fusion. Yeah, find your fusion. Brilliant. It’s not my, it’s not my, uh, it’s not my line, but it’s a great one.  

Well, we’re, we’re getting it out there. I think there’s, there’s so many people in our industry who have great stories to tell. 

I meet ’em all the time and they’re just, there’s just not sure what to do about it. Yeah. Right. So I think, um I think anything that helps is, is great. That that one’s a really easy tip.  

And, and you know, I think you touched on it at the start, Jono. You see people posting on, uh, you, you know, you joked on it, but you see people posting on LinkedIn, you go, they don’t think that, no, that’s not them. 

Yeah. So you know that. No. Yeah. Yeah. He’s, she’s not like that. Yeah. Or he’s not like that. So that’s a basic one. Yes. You know?  

Yes.  

It’s your personal platform at the end of the day, so.  

Yeah, that’s right.  

Uh, fantastic advice. Um, I think. I think when IT leaders are, are trying to get a message out there mm-hmm. 

And, and sort of build some authority or, or be thought leaders the, the authentic ones. You can tell straight away. What, what do you think the biggest mistake that people attempting, attempting to establish themselves as, as thought leaders in our industry are making? So obviously you’re Adjacent looking in. 

Yeah. You’re seeing, you’re seeing stuff done really well. But if there was one or two common mistakes that are being made that, that you have observed, what, what would they be?  

They’re, they’re lazy with it. So what I mean is they they want the, the goal of being a thought leader, but they’re not prepared to do any of the steps that get them there. 

It’s supposed to be selfless actually. Mm-hmm. You’re supposed to pass on knowledge. It’s not supposed to be self-serving. You, you will win, the glory will come. Mm-hmm. In that you will, the, the byproduct of this, you will build your brand, but you actually, if you could want to build a community, you have to give more than you take. 

And I think a lot of people don’t get that point. So for, for example. Like really quick story. Before I started in tech media, I used to be in sports, so I studied univer, uh, four years journalism and university in the UK. And I wrote for a, my football team is Sunderland, and I wrote for a, it’s called a Fanzine. 

So it’s the shout out to the Sunderland. Yeah. Fans. 

All four of them. Okay. A magazine, it’s, it’s called a Fanzine, so it’s a magazine written by the fans. So you’re essentially, every club has one. And I would go in on a Monday and we would, you know, there’s five or six of us. It’s, I’m volunteering and it’s an A5 you know, 60 page magazine that you produce every week. You’d be writing stories about players, formations, whatever it is, transfers, and then the designers would be doing it as you go. And then the, the big difference was you, you get the magazine on the Friday and then me as a, as a teenager at uni, you get the boxes. 

And then I had to go outside the stadium and sell it in front of 50,000 people. So the lead story on the front was potentially mine. And you have people walking past saying, you know what it’s called a Love Supreme. I’d be stood there going Love Supreme, two pound 50. And they’d be walking past going, I’m not getting that mate it’s shit. 

You dunno what you’re talking about. So you get live, you get 50,000 people walking past you saying you dunno what you’re talking about. You dunno what you’re talking about. And my point is it learn that sports fans are very well educated. On their sport they’re very structured in their arguments. 

They’re very passionate about how they argue. They’re very authentic. And it made me think, well, if I incorporate that into my writing in this fanzine, it will actually help actually improve my thought leadership, my respect in the market. They don’t have to agree with me, but they can at least see the difference of opinion and that it’s well considered. 

And I’ve always took that and maybe ’cause I had the real time, like you know, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know what, at least now write an article. Yeah. Yeah. People really have to go out their way to offend you now. Right. They really have to like, call you and, and say, you know, you don’t know what you’re talking about. 

But then it made me think, well, if you are writing content now and you are, you know, you talk about the mistakes, just be well considered. Really go through whatever it is your point is and and be authentic in it and, and have the depth. And then it doesn’t matter if people agree or not, but they can always at least agree that where you’re coming from is in the correct place. 

And I think that’s thought leadership. People sometimes confuse it with you have to agree with them. No, that’s right. You don’t. Yeah, I don’t, I just think, you know what, that’s very well considered and I respect where you’re coming from. Mm. I might disagree, but I think in that respect, you are a thought leader. 

Yeah, that’s right. So,  

and Ricky Gervais said that, didn’t he? Just, just because you’re offended doesn’t make you right. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. So you’re, you’re allowed to have an opinion or something. Yeah.  

And I think where I’m offended is when it’s surface level, I think it’s insulting to people. Mm. And you guys would know that, right? 

When you’re a, in the audience of things and people say things to you one-liners and you’re like. Come on. Give me more.  

Give me more.  

Give me more. That’s right. Yeah. So what does that actually mean? Yeah. That thing that you just said, and I still might disagree with you at the end, but just give me more. 

Yes. Yeah.  

Yes. So I got a question for you both on LinkedIn again, right? And for some reason it’s on my mind. But you know, when you see, you read somebody’s title on LinkedIn, it says, I help organisations discover they’re inner talent, or I help organisations fine tune their strategy or growth or whatever. 

And I, I read those and I think, do you.  

Yeah, really  

like you, you, you’re gonna take a look at my business straight away and you, and your job is to immediately improve that because you have the power  

and you also can’t follow instructions. ’cause that tab is job title. Right. You haven’t filled it out properly. 

Right.  

It irks me. Does it irk, does it irk you guys as well? I don’t know. It bothers me. Yeah. I think,  

um, I think there was a bit of a trend early on. Uh, and I, I, this is going back in the early days of, of LinkedIn now. Um, I even spoke to a consultant in, in a previous gig I was at who recommended  

Mm.  

Using that field in that way,  

right? 

Like there were people educating, uh, salespeople in our industry to, to, to operate that way on the platform. So there might have been a bit of a trend. Maybe it’s a hangover from that, I’m not sure. But, uh, I distinctly remember being given thought leadership advice, right. To, to use that, that, that field in that way. 

And even, even the, the, the word I isn’t a good start. Yeah. Like, it’s like, well, oh, you, you’re, you’re not part of a team. No. You don’t have a, you know, you’re not, you don’t have technical capabilities there, you don’t have strategy. So even that gives an indicator.  

There’s another hot tip for our, um, audience. 

Uh, be authentic. If I, I actually think I, I like if you’re a, if you’re a salesperson. Put that in your job title. Mm-hmm. Exactly. That’s what you do. I’m a, I’m in sales and, and be. What’s wrong with that? Be proud of that.  

Oh no. The sneaky ones are the recruiters. Right. ’cause they’re consultants. Yeah. Yeah. You know? 

That’s right. Head of Technology. No, you’re not really. Yeah. Yeah. And you’ve gotta like, dig deep into the profile. Hang on a minute.  

I think, I think this is, I think some salespeople struggle with this. They don’t want to, they think if they tell people they’re a salesperson, it’s, it’s hard. You’ve already failed. 

Right? If, if you are coming at that profession from a genuine place, it’s actually your job to help people. Yeah. And uh, and that that’s a sales person’s job. Be okay with that.  

And you have an advantage in that you might have spoke to a hundred people in the same situation.  

That’s right. In the  

1. Like you have a great lens on the market.

Yeah. Like a huge, hugely unique lens that other people don’t have. Mm-hmm. Yeah. If you just own that space. Yeah. And not try to be something else.  

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think that’s great advice for our listeners. That is a good place to wrap up that conversation because I know Naran’s pretty excited to hit you right between the eyes with the quickfire three. 

Now I’m gonna change these questions just to keep No, I’m not, I’m gonna read the questions. Can’t remember what they’re, anyway,   

we’ll get into that right after this break.   

Okay. We are at the section which we refer to as the quickfire three questions. All right. Now I’m gonna hope that you understand what this is all about ’cause I’m gonna hit them with you. We’ve just been talking about authenticity, so I expect you to just run your mouth and whatever comes in your head immediately, right? It’s the best way. It’s the only way. Alright, here we go. 

What’s the one piece of advice that you would give your past self before taking on a major tech initiative or challenge?  

Just do it. Actually. Just do it. I take too long to do things. Yeah, I overthink things.  

Right. I asked you that same question. I got a similar answer from yourself, from you, Jono when uh, you, you would’ve said to your younger self, just trust in your instincts. 

Yeah. Get on with it. Don’t be afraid to fail. I suggested maybe that could be, uh, cataclysmic. You suggested it might not be, but I agree with you by the way. I think there’s a lot too much hesitation, the amount of people I speak to that could have made decisions that didn’t and regretted not doing.  

I’m tweaking everything all the time for no reason. 

Right. Just like crack on, get on with it. Yeah, yeah,  

yeah. Have a bias for action. Mm-hmm. Good advice.  

Good advice. I like that. Question number two, what’s something that you used to believe in, in tech leadership that you no longer do that? The thought leadership. Actually, I’m a bit disappointed sometimes, right? 

That it’s, there’s not enough care taken to deliver that quality content. And maybe it’s because of where I’m coming from in the market, but I think especially at a leadership standpoint. That’s the kind of the benchmark, right? Or it should be. Yeah. So that’s a little bit disappointing sometimes when you sit down with people and you think, oh, I expected more. 

And I’m not saying there isn’t more there. I’m just saying for whatever reason you’re not sharing it in, in a authentic way.  

Yeah. Maybe people have gotta believe in themselves a little bit more. And, and I, I love the, the fusion piece, right? Lean into your fusion. I can’t remember the exact words. Find your fusion. 

Find your fusion. Right? Yeah. That’s a good way to do it. Mm. For maybe those, those of us that, that aren’t naturally extrovert and capable of just getting on with it.  

Just to expand on that, so you, you thought that people were more authentic than they are? 

No, it was more, I, I’d sit down and do, and it’s, it’s not always that. 

So at Moxie now, we, we, we do these profiles and we do executive interviews. We, we, we struggle to get execs aligned to how we wanna do it because. You know, the PR agencies, the traditional way of doing it, it’s, they’re very much against it. I have to be honest, in terms of people confuse authenticity with being controversial. 

That’s not the same thing. It’s just being honest around what you’re seeing in the market and, and actually having that depth. We’re going back to, there’s not a lot of appetite for doing that. In the market, unfortunately. So from my side it’s, you know, when I’m selecting interviews, it’s just based on relationships 

’cause I know that person. So I’m fortunate I can do that, but it’s so difficult at the minute. So it’s more when I sit down with someone that I know is, is great at what they do and have the ability to give genuine insights. They’re hamstrung by a million reasons, potentially out of their control. That stops them from doing it. 

What do you think, uh, causes that? Is it a bureaucracy? Is there, uh, people worried about their share price or, you know, o other things like what’s driving that?  

To be fair, there’s some fair reasons, especially if you work in the vendor land, right. In, in, in, it’s listed. And you don’t wanna be that person. 

But that’s fine. I mean, not that we ever do the financials anyway, but, so there’s an element of that. There’s, I’m sure there’s fear of, you know, you don’t wanna say something wrong, especially if you’re in a culture where it’s very controlled in terms of, there’s some large media, uh, vendors globally that are very liberal in how they engage and very authentic. 

And there’s some that are very controlled. So I’d say it’s probably fear and I, I wanna be respectful of that. ’cause people have a job. Right. And you want to make sure that you’re looking after that first. But yeah, the, and the, the PR side, I, it’s hard sometimes on the engagement, I do struggle. Mm-hmm. They, they don’t. 

What we’re doing is not very much value, to be honest. Mm. Because they, it’s, you know, longer form, it takes a couple of hours, you gotta sit down. It’s, it’s actually very in depth. Not a lot of people actually want that level of, it’s not even scrutiny, but it’s kind of like an opportunity to share your thoughts. 

It’s amazing how many people shy away from that when they get given the opportunity.  

Well, so there’s two parts to it, right? Mm. So we, Jono, we, we know the experience of running this podcast and cloud reset before it. Um. I would say it’s, it’s probably in the minority. The guests that we had on that had the freedom to say what they want. 

I mean, we obviously, when we release the podcast, James will do the same for you. You, you get right of refusal, you get to edit. Mm-hmm. And choose what you want to keep or not. And most of the time it’s all fine. Oh, you’re good. Go for it. But, but some, some guests go through hell with that. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel for them and they rock up with, I mean, we’ve had some guests that rocked up with like six, seven pages of notes, almost like they’re reading from script now they relax obviously because we’re lunatics Jono and we keep the conversation light and breezy. 

But I’m wondering whether. It’s a real privilege to have the freedom to speak your mind when you work for a business versus the opposite.  

Mm, right. Oh yeah. Yeah. And look, we, we see it more on the partner side ’cause there’s a little bit more freedom, obviously. Mm-hmm. In terms of, you know, potentially locally owned businesses that it’s, you’ve gotta, that you’ve only gotta persuade one or two people sometimes around, you know, having that. 

So I get it and I’m respectful of it, but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t help the brand if, if you ask me. No, no. To be honest,  

maybe there’s a natural shift going on here. Right? I mean, we talked before about podcasts. They’re growing interest people walking away from traditional sort of media perhaps, and preferencing long form conversation, building personal brand, the importance of that and the byproduct, it helps your business, et cetera. 

Maybe, maybe we’re seeing a natural shift. 

I, I agree. And, and the, the media side isn’t doing enough of a job to try and hold the line. Like, that’s what I’m saying. We, I’ve walked away from quite a lot of high profile interviews with, with the greatest of respect. Just because it wasn’t, uh, you couldn’t do those things. 

You couldn’t have that open conversation. You couldn’t be authentic. And I’d like to think I have the trust to do that in a very respectful and professional way. It’s not, I’m not trying to hunt for anything. No, that’s right. So, but you know, that’s fine. Sometimes you proof is in the pudding. Right. I’m sure you guys once, once this goes out more, you’ve raised that bar and then people come in here and they feel obliged to meet the level that you’ve set. 

Yeah. And that just takes time sometimes. We hope so. Oh  

yeah. I think so. Yeah. I definitely think people are, are becoming more receptive. Correct. To telling a really authentic story about what they’re passionate about and Yeah. And, uh, in, in a business setting. That, that’s actually what’s required to do good business. 

Mm-hmm. Correct. Right. Like if you are, if you’re genuinely there to solve a great problem and earn the right to exchange the solution for some money, that’s all, that’s all business is, right? So, exactly. I think that authenticity is really important. Mm-hmm.  

What a great segue to question three. Okay. So question three is this, what is your gut check for spotting a good partner or walking away from a bad one? 

And let me just clarify what we mean by that. Is business partner. In, in any capacity. Good, good clarification. Okay. That was for Jonos benefit. He got confused last time.  

Do you know what I think mutual respect? I, I, I, and, and look, I know there’s, when you do partnerships, there’s, there’s a, there’s potentially an exchange of money, so there’s someone who’s paying for it, someone who’s maybe, and usually for us it’s, it’s, we’re on the obviously delivery side, so we’ll be working with someone, but we value that mutual respect. 

And actually the. And that extends into, you know, if you’re having a partnership, then let the other partner do what they do well. Mm-hmm. And, and you know, a amount of times we would potentially partner with someone and then be controlled in our area. And it’s like, well, why, why are you partnering with us in the first place? 

Yeah. So, and, and vice versa, we would be like, oh, you do that, you do that very well, please do it. You’re the expert. You take the lead. So, and that for me is a little bit of mutual respect in terms of when you go into those partnerships, it’s that. Okay, well what do you bring to the table? What do we bring? 

Okay. You do your thing. We’ll do our thing. We can collaborate and that’s where you actually get some really good stuff. Yep. So I, I’d put it down to, that works for me.  

Great answers. That was the quick fire three.  

James, thank you so much. For joining us. Congratulations on Moxie Insights. It’s going gangbusters and I know for me personally, uh, uh, incredibly, uh, interesting, perhaps self-indulgent conversation because we’re so curious to learn more about how all of this works. But I, I’m sure our listeners will have gotten a lot out of that. 

There’s some great takeaways. We’ll, we’ll chop them up into little sound bites. For maybe some of them, uh, to make it easier to consume. Fantastic conversation today. Very grateful. Thank you very much. Thank you, James.  

Appreciate you having me, gentlemen. Thank you very much.  

Pleasure. 

That’s it for this episode of Things. Reasons. We are the Inside track for Australian IT leaders. We are executive produced by Pru Loon. Our digital producer is Karina Aguilera. Remember that you can catch us anywhere you find your podcast. That’s Spotify, YouTube, apple Podcasts, et cetera. Connect with us on LinkedIn, please. 

Uh, we want that. I’m gonna put some details up right there. Uh, and uh, yeah, look, if you wanna join us or you wanna support the podcast, uh, please email pru@thingsreasons.show and I think we can put that email address up as well. There you go,  ding. Thanks very much. Thanks very much. See you next time everyone.