A trip down memory lane with Alex Adams and Jye Smith (that’s me, who am I kidding) and the Unyoked founders Chris and Cam Grant after the launch of their Nature of Creativity report. This is the transcript.
We did a bunch of good with work with the team, and still catch up for beers. Mr Andrew Lovell introduced me to the hunting community and it changed me life – for the better – forever.
Enjoy.
Transcript:
Jye Smith
Hi everyone and welcome to make and create a podcast about creativity and culture and how it affects us.
Alex Adams
So Jye, I think I tagged you in something before on Insta, it’s, I’ve been really interested with the tiny house movement and minimalism for quite a while now. And you know, that whole idea of, we’re working crazy hours and finding ways that we can sort of strip back our lives and have more room for our own headspace. And I recently came across a company called and yoked, and they offer individual tiny cabins in the middle of the wilderness here in Australia. You basically booked them in and you get away, get out into nature. And it’s a way to disconnect and relax. And I think as soon as I came across him, I was like, we have to get these guys on the show. I was really keen. And so tell us a little bit more about that. We’ve got brothers and founders, Chris and Cam grant, welcome to the show, guys. Guys.
Jye Smith
Do you guys want to quickly introduce yourself so that people at home know which?
Cam Grant
Yeah, sure. I’m Cam. co founder,
Chris Grant
and CO CEO and co founder, Ron, you’re
Jye Smith
so clear, different
Alex Adams
products with the same price. And they’re wearing the
Jye Smith
same shoes? I don’t know. Did you notice?
Chris Grant
We didn’t until it was just pointed out. So
Alex Adams
it’s not a thing? Like did you share clothes a lot? Did your mom dress you the same? No.
Cam Grant
Usually I’m barefoot. I think the question before every meeting I asked Chris is hey, do you think I need to wear shoes to this?
Chris Grant
Is this a shoe? Is a shoe to wear shoes? He hasn’t really shoes?
Cam Grant
Yeah. A little bit too on yoke to myself right now. Just what do you feed rebelling from the corporate life? Yeah.
Jye Smith
So you know that I guess that’s what I’m really curious about even even from a name point of view, well, where does that name come from?
Cam Grant
It’s so yoke is a thing that used to attach animals to the cart. So like an axe or a bison or horse. So literally on your act, it’s an old word, but it means to be set free to cease working. And that was the whole kind of ethos is we came up with the idea. Like we were always in Commonwealth Bank, just across the road there. And just you know, wearing the suit all day, like tied to the desk till 10pm at night. So the whole idea was about not doing that anymore, and sort of setting ourselves free from the nine to five and that kind of, I guess, way of way of living.
Alex Adams
So yeah, I actually thought it had something to do with eggs for a while, like hatching your freedom or something. I’m
Jye Smith
like, am I the yolk? Or is the yolk and come out of me?
Chris Grant
out of it, but there isn’t an L in the yolk. So yeah,
Alex Adams
yes. Well, I did. And again, I
Jye Smith
went further. I’m like, oh, that must have been the URL. made all these excuses why it must be about. So you said used to work at the Commonwealth Bank, one of our biggest clients, which is always interested on the wall. And really kind of what made you think of starting that’s like, what was that breaking point? And, you know, in that office that
Cam Grant
I guess I was like me and Chris had always wanted to start something like we’ve kind of been brought up with sort of independence and curiosity, one of our key kind of values. So we’ve had books of other ideas over the years and things and wanted to start something but and yeah, it was the first one that really was asked I guess and really we had that. I don’t know that passion that kind of want to actually go that next step further than just paper and actually do something.
Jye Smith
So you actually have books of ideas, just ideas you want. Like what are
Alex Adams
some of the other ideas? Yeah, didn’t say to to fruition?
Cam Grant
Okay, coffee startup at one stage and aggregator
Chris Grant
for festivals back in the day. We’re having a lot of festivals.
Jye Smith
We keep getting two months. What was terrible?
Chris Grant
Oh, man, it was a lot of ideas. But
Cam Grant
yeah, I think it’s really like we and probably our bosses as well just knew that we weren’t going to be in the office for long like we were we kind of didn’t want to, I guess be restrained by that kind of nine to five like hierarchy and that kind of stuff because you can’t really come up with your ideas. And then see them through. There’s so many layers of bureaucracy and all that shit. Yeah, pushes it down, can can take any
Chris Grant
issues off in board meetings. I was at at General Assembly, which is just up the road. Yeah. So I was at Woolworths originally in a marketing role, and then left to try and find a more entrepreneurial pursuit, and join GA when they were fresh in Australia, and then was heading up the sales and then was shipped over to Singapore to manage their sales over there and help start their business. Wow. Yeah. And
Jye Smith
so, you know, you kind of was it a physical book, by the way, I’m so fascinated.
Chris Grant
There was lists, too many ideas.
Cam Grant
Just just notebooks over the time that you know, there’s little moleskin ones. Yeah, stuff like that. Yeah. It’s like scribble didn’t
Chris Grant
just be a process. Okay. What about this? Oh, no, yeah, that’s
like, hey, what about the turn
Alex Adams
ever throw those out? What a treasure to go back and look upon? Yeah, you
Jye Smith
know, when you make your biography, which will be a joint biography, from womb to millions. Have you always wanted to do things together? Like, I don’t wanna get too hung up on the fact that you’re twins, but you’re twins. And I can’t stop thinking about I think
Chris Grant
it’s, it’s been somewhat natural for us. So so we haven’t made it sort of a Cognizant decision to do it. But we’ve always been together. So our skill sets do complement each other quite well. And, you know, it’s been a positive, we’ve been talking to investors and going through this funding round, being able to sort of scratch out founder risk, which is, you know, serious issues when you have two co founders that they’re going to fall out.
Alex Adams
I didn’t know that was a thing. It is, yeah, it’s a it’s a thing. It’s
Chris Grant
something that they need to take into consideration, how solid is this relationship? Before they they put their money into the business? So Kevin, I can can tell each other whatever we want. And then and then bounce back from it. So you know, we can there’s, there’s no bullshit. And as a founder relationship, it actually really works quite well. Yeah. And we’ve,
Cam Grant
we’re definitely quite complementary. But we moved around a lot as kids like, we’ve went from Darwin to Melbourne, to Sydney, to Perth, to Melbourne to Sydney. And we were, I guess, as as twins, it’s a lot easier to stick together when you’re getting chucked in new schools and stuff like that. So you always had a buddy? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like sort of safety fallback there. But
Chris Grant
then you were living in Madrid for a while I was living in Singapore for a while. So we haven’t always always done things together. But it just sort of worked well, that we would end up working on the same thing together.
Alex Adams
And that moving around a lot at childhood did that subliminally inspire you too long for getting away or inspiring people to get out or get out of town and move around?
Chris Grant
I think so I think Brad Pitt have been comfortable with the uncomfortable into us. So in terms of being being happy to start something, and to sort of take that risk, I think that was bred from moving around from an early age, in terms of trying to get people out of the city. And back to nature. I think some of that came from our childhood, we used to camp a lot and hike a lot and spend a lot of time outdoors. And so once we were in the city, and we were locked in managerial roles, and we were just spreadsheet it to death and not getting out there anymore. We looked for a way to to be able to do it. And that’s sort of where this idea was born from. But you
Alex Adams
just took it one step further. It wasn’t like cool. Let’s start at I don’t know, a tent camping business. It was like, let’s, let’s build cool tiny houses out there that people can live in. So what what inspired that?
Cam Grant
We um, there’s kind of when we were at our desks, like I’d be getting spreadsheets to death at 10pm. It’s up at CBA kind of hating life, but you have this dual monitors and on one of the monitors was I would always have Kevin pawn, which you guys know you guys familiar with that?
Chris Grant
It’s definitely not born in Canada. It’s like,
Alex Adams
is it like a tiny house?
Jye Smith
That would be a bit different. Yeah. Kevin, Kevin lifestyle. very particular. No, it’s
Cam Grant
It’s like little pictures of cabins, mainly on Instagram. But it started as like Tumblr and as a thing. But it’s just pictures of cabins in really wild locations, like on the outs down by rivers in a rainforest. And it’s kind of that feeling when you’d get scrolling through the house just wanting to disappear and disconnect and I guess feel those benefits of being in the middle of nowhere and not having your phone buzz every three seconds. Yeah. And it’s kind of we used to go on trips for that, I guess, like once a year. So around the end of the, you know, disappear, leave your phone and your watch at home, but we wanted to create a way of getting that feeling but in our day to day, and like attend doesn’t quite get that because there’s all that hassle and preparation involved. Because
Jye Smith
that’s camping. That’s escaping. Yeah, that’s going to do work, you know, and we
Cam Grant
still do that there’s a time and place for that. But we wanted somewhere where on that Wednesday night at 10pm when I’m getting spreadsheets to death I could just get up drive like less than two hours and be in my little place in the middle of nowhere but totally chilled, rather than like hiking for days like and leeches on. You know and stuff like that’s an awesome thing. And we all always do that. But you can’t do that on a Thursday, basically. Yeah.
Chris Grant
And the cabin was the was the gap term to finish on that question that the cabin was the gap in the market as well. So you There are 10 companies that existed that there was claiming that exists there’s there’s Airbnb so you can stay on the on the outskirts of a town with a field in the backyard. You can get your camp and go camping. But there was nothing in that in between where you can get this sort of escapism romanticism of camping but with the comfort of a hotel and a cabin. Yeah, it
Alex Adams
really spoke to me, I thought that’s exactly what I would like to do. I like going camping as well. But how nice if you can just leave work is set on a Thursday and everything’s set up for you. And I
Jye Smith
love that idea. Like you can get to relaxing quicker, like, and that feels paradoxical, but it obviously isn’t. It’s like, yeah, for me when I think you know, even after work, I’m like, it takes me two hours to fully unwind from whatever I’m doing and like calm down. Let’s face
Alex Adams
it, camping isn’t always it can be really stressful. Yeah, you’re trying to pitch a tent, and the sun’s already gone down. And you’re like trying to light the fire. And it’s only until all of that’s done that you’re like, oh, crack a beer and you’re actually relaxed. And then you’re gonna go home today. Yeah, pretty much. How did you go about actually making the cabins because they’re super cute. And where did you get the land to put them on? Whose land do you rent? And who built the cabin?
Chris Grant
We just says there’s three parts of the question, Kevin? Yeah. So first with the cabin, we actually teamed up with a couple of buddies of ours that we knew from uni days, their their companies called Fresh prints and their design studio and they, they build and design little or some things like this. And so we just we caught up with them and just sort of brainstormed and then build it with them, and then bootstrap the first to ourselves. And so we just did a lot of research. There wasn’t really anything like this in Australia at the time. So there was a bit of a movement in the US around these mobile cabins and tiny houses. So yeah, I think that’s yeah, we did you got anything to add there.
Cam Grant
Yeah, I mean, there’s tonnes like we were always running out of that the Capricorn and that kind of stuff. All around the world is all this I guess, this movement around modular and like small spaces. Yeah. And using the most of what you can and being minimal footprint, and everything says tonnes of cool stuff out there. So it wasn’t the worst like researchers they just trolling through like pictures of all the stuff, we got lots of design books and things like that, and would leave through all the books and like highlight pages of bits with like, like little tucked under the stairwells, and big windows and those kinds of things. So yeah, we sort of gradually pieced together our ideal cabin, I guess it’s an easy thing to have fun with it. Yeah. And we had the kind of principles we went into it was that it wanted to bring the outside in. So focus on the environment. So wanted to make you feel part part of the landscape, not on the landscape. And it wanted to be minimalist. So I wanted to sort of pare everything back. So it cut out all the clutter of this nine to five sort of city life and just making you focus on on what’s important. Yeah. And that. Yeah, that’s why we use sort of really pared back nice word. Like don’t have anything superfluous in the cabin. So you won’t find any plugs for hair dryers or TVs or any that kind of crap. No, take
Chris Grant
some licence from sort of Scandinavian and Japanese minimalism. And yeah, just really tried to keep it simple and keep people focusing on the landscape outside and also themselves and and their thoughts and you know, what really matters instead of the things around him.
Jye Smith
Because that really is the big difference between shelter and you know, what we consider a home now, a home has become something that we fill with things that we want to represent ourselves versus shelter, which is this keeps you safe, but it’s not going to be your focus from it.
Cam Grant
Yeah,
Alex Adams
so what is in the cabin?
Cam Grant
There’s a queen size bed. There’s locks
Alex Adams
isn’t it? Queen size bed? Yeah.
Cam Grant
I guess like two burners stove, hot water, shower, and toilet. And then we supply some other things. We’ve got a partnership with Penguin to have Penguin Classics in there. So
Chris Grant
we’d have a little library. Yeah, yeah, we’ve
Cam Grant
got yoga mats that we partner with someone to put in there as well. We provide some provisions so like, we’ve partnered with Sarah Glover who’s uh
Alex Adams
yeah she’s a wonderful Yeah,
Cam Grant
but some sick little like on your branded sort of goodies in there like smallest kits and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. More to do with the outside the fire sort of use your hands and everything. And some other cultures
Chris Grant
campsite cocktails with Archie rose, we’ve got little campsite Negroni is in there at the moment and we’ve got some other sweet ones coming out that are exclusive to me it really yeah no excellent whiskey sale you might be able to make lots Yeah.
Alex Adams
And so coming back to the properties and finding those got some more mates that you hit.
Chris Grant
No we do we do. First we we we letterbox drop to actually we really we just blanketed we did a whole school 10,000 letterbox drops or something and and took out ads in local newspapers in the key areas that that we we determined where we wanted to start. So we were really looking for areas that had that sort of wanderlust feel and then more of a rain forest luscious landscapes. So that’s why we chose kangaroo Valley and up near why on
Jye Smith
Because to stick my opinion in and tell me what you think at least because every time I every time I say, there’s that question, I think it’s on Tinder or hinge. And it’s like, beach hot or log cabin. And I’m always log cabin, and like, it feels very unstrained sometimes they say that it was, Oh, you want the fucking bank? In some way? And I might not because I, you know, it’s spoiled, especially growing up in Sydney. But there’s something about the shelter rainforest, which feels more magical. And I know that’s because I’ve been spoiled because I’ve grown up near the beach. Yeah, but there is something I think that’s, you know, as you said before, Scandinavian almost kind of this, you know, very, you know, Viking esque kind of thing, you know, wandering out and in a rain forest or a valley that I think has a certain amount of romanticism that a beach, you know, for whatever reason, maybe it’s just Australia in general doesn’t quite give you but I’ve said that it’s a really unpopular opinion. I kind of get why feels unpopular, but I don’t know, like, why
Alex Adams
can’t you have both?
Cam Grant
Now, we definitely agree we, we actually picked all the properties for three key factors, like the first two is that you can’t see you can’t see anyone or any other human elements. And then you can’t hear anyone or any other human elements. The third one is wilderness vibes, which is exactly what you’re talking about. It’s very hard to write down or like describe, but it’s basically like, if you if you guys go check out one of the cabins, we’ll send you to a particular one, they’ve all got it. But it’s that feeling kind of at the back of your neck that you get when you’re sort of looking up at a mountain or forest, out in a rain forest that you feel small from nature. Yeah, you get that in some beach locations, we could be pretty isolated. Whereas in these locations, yeah, you can just get that feeling just, you know, two hours away pretty much feel dwarfed. And yeah,
Jye Smith
and that’s it. You know, I think I think there is a there is a feeling with a lot of these things that isn’t, you know, it’s a feeling you get seeing the cabin where it is it’s not about seeing the cabin on its design aesthetics, about that placement in that context. And, you know, I think that’s what we’ve been looking about a lot, and probably kind of my next question to you is, people do their best work in different environments, like sitting in the agency here, you know, we have designed this very specifically, you know, in terms of even who can hear who, when they speak, like, that’s so critical for us, because you can’t shoot everyone out. And for us, you know, the lighting was really important. And then it changes as they go down to the further other end with our designers, their lighting changes again, so and then in finance, they allied shame, because they all need something different. Where do you kind of guys draw inspiration from like, do you go to one of these cabins and sit in them? Or, you know, are there other areas that you kind of draw inspiration from to do your work?
Chris Grant
We do, definitely. I mean, we definitely drink our own Kool Aid, we spent a fair bit of time down there, and a lot of our best decisions and best sort of creative ideas have come from spending time in the cabin. So at first, we were always out there, setting them up. And now we’ll just make sure that we structured into both out and the team’s monthly activities to go and spend some time out there. I mean, there are a lot of studies that show the importance of spending some time in nature and also the effect that it can have on the creative process. And it was at the University of Utah, I think it was that did this really interesting study that empirically proved that spending two days out in nature would improve the creative problem solving process by 50% in the participant, so like stuff like that, which is proven results from from spending time in nature means that yeah, we do it a lot in our process.
Alex Adams
Yeah, that kind of reminded me of the press release that you guys sent over. So Adrian clay, you know, we got 100 Different press releases a day, we always get random deliveries that kind of sparked our attention and you’ve kind of become a bit desensitised to it, but your media kit or press release that kind of came through the door really struck me. And it was a little prescription, a prescription for nature. And even the way it was all laid out look like a doctor’s prescription. And then it came with like a little wilderness spray and the wilderness seeds I needed a plant or something. And it was like, you know, you require one dose of nature to get rid of your workaholic deficiency or something like that. And I just thought it was so cool and very creative. So well done, who came up with that idea? And that was I guess that was your launch? Right? Like getting out to media. You This was when When did you first launch it was a couple of months ago? No,
Cam Grant
it launched back in March 2017. Oh, okay. We just got so much organic media, we really just didn’t need to do anything. We’re still I mean, we’re still getting tonnes of organic but we wanted to basically create those connections because we want to do some more longer lasting activations and some cool partnerships and things like that. Yeah, we got a few things going with like monsters, children and things like that. That’ll be really cool to kind of creating those longer term but the prescriptions I think it was eller actually on our team that kind of first came up with it, maybe but we all like we have quite a collaborative creative process like we’ve we I don’t know if you’ve read creativity Inc. or the Pixar guys like love that book and we sort of agreed a lot of that until took some lessons from other companies that are known for their creative processes and really collaborate. Even if it’s not someone’s DIRECT Project with various stages where we throw around ideas, brainstorm, we get the post that’s out for everything we do pretty much and try and get the best outcome. And prescriptions was one of them. It actually came about because we were wanting to redo our gift cards. So it wasn’t just for the media, we actually
Jye Smith
Oh, that’s
Cam Grant
because the idea was that there’s actually been a doctors around the world. I think the WHO report on it in Scotland and other places, like physically giving patients prescriptions and get the fuck outside. Yeah, like it was
Jye Smith
a wilderness. Meditation is another one that they’re allowed to put down. Because they weren’t really allowed to for a while something. Yeah.
Chris Grant
Yeah, I think the core activity prescription.
Cam Grant
Yeah. Yeah. So we wanted to do that. We’re like, Well, you shouldn’t be doing this. There’s actual scientific benefits. But also, we can take the piss and have some fun, like, yeah, it’d be pretty cool if you were in your office, and someone went and gave you a prescription to the wilderness, because you’re sitting there and like, you’ve got phantom phone variations and stuff like that. So we’ll actually get
Chris Grant
in touch with your boss for you. If you want us to, if your boss isn’t letting you off. Just swing us an email and we’ll we’ll give him a buzz and explain the benefits to him and you’ll be off to a cabin in no time.
Alex Adams
What are your old bosses think of what you do now have spoken to them at all? Since you’ve done them?
Chris Grant
They were both really encouraging. I think so to General Assembly was a great place to foster something like this. Yeah, sure. They were really encouraging. And, you know, it’s sort of grassroots, sort of an entrepreneur had really liked them. They’re quite involved in the community. So now my boss was sweet that they’re letting me work in because we did a year year and a half full time work and full time running it out. And so and I was in Singapore, for a chunk of that, too, wasn’t so you know, you you were handling things here. I was three hours behind it was it was pretty hectic, but no, my boss was very supportive. And yeah, yeah, we’ve done it without them. Really? Yeah,
Cam Grant
yeah, we definitely choke. I think that was cool. was is that AFR one, I think, where there’s some quote by me, and I think they like they tweaked it a little bit. But it basically said that I was like, hating life and stuff like that. And like, just hated the work. And he was he like, messaged me and said, Oh, really? He’s kind of a mentor at the moment, like right now. And then we’ll still stay close. Because his support and that this, I guess, this specific team that I was in that let me do this, this is not many jobs, that you can physically work two jobs at the same time. And like I would go down, like we started cleaning the cabins ourselves. So we could build all the processes and iterate and stuff. And it’s two hours away. Yeah, I’d go down like the composting toilet. The first one we used was, we’re not using it anymore, but it needed empties, essentially. And stuff. Yeah. And I’d have to drive down at like 3am to kangaroo Valley, do that. Come back and go to work and go to a board meeting at like, eight in the morning. And have like still like muddle my sheets. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s a good experience like it, I guess it shows you what you can do when you couldn’t
Chris Grant
get it. It was well worth it. Yeah. Yeah.
Jye Smith
So talking about ship. What, what’s been the biggest scare you guys have had about the business?
Chris Grant
We’ve had, we’ve been pretty lucky that we’ve, we’ve had great forward momentum since the go again, and we’ve had a great sort of network of people to lean to if there was anything that looks like it might go pear shaped to to make sure that we catch up before it does. I mean, we’ve had to work hard in finding the landowners the right time. And, you know, while we were getting the business off the ground and still working and trying to you know, we were iterating this cabin designs and head to head things like that toilet, you know, which, which didn’t quite work. And so it’s been a lot of hustle, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick one sort of thing that really gave us a fright. Could you
Cam Grant
know, I mean, I think the main main learning is that everything takes longer than you expect. Yeah, actually, no, we’re the smallest blip on the radar for everyone else out there and they don’t care is really kind of like
Jye Smith
barefooted man came to our door
Cam Grant
Yes, you just got to just cut it like hustle, make sure you’re you’re always following up and stuff like that. Yeah, I
Chris Grant
think we’ve really been in touch with how helpful people are and how in the sort of Australian startup scene how willing people are to, to help you know, if you’re, if you show that you’re willing to put in the hard work and you’ve got a bit of a opportunity on your hands. We’ve really enjoyed and so we’ve had a lot of people help us on the way which has been great.
Jye Smith
In terms of running a business how many staff I you know, five, including us. And do you does it does it feel like a business like have you transitioned from this feels like we’re doing something like hustling together to suddenly I’ve got HR issues and suddenly I’m dealing operational things not
Cam Grant
not quite yet. Like sometimes it does when we have to do bookkeeping. Definitely. No, we I mean, we’re one of the key things we’ve tried to do. I mean, we’re only small now but building the culture and one of the reasons why we wanted to start our own company was work our own way. So if we ever do feel like that we’ll have a meeting and seeing what the hell’s going on. Yeah, because we were actually working out of my house at the moment. So terrace house in Redfern. Hopefully the real estate agent isn’t listening. Yeah, it’s, it’s really cool. Like, it’s kind of a family vibe. Like, I mean, there’s only a few of us there. But you’ve got the lounge room, the outdoors. It’s kind of a different than an office environment. Kind of like the space here, I guess. But I think it’s important to make it not feel like a real business. Anti corporate
Chris Grant
was money. Yeah. Yeah. Anti corporate was part of our ethos from the start, we want to do do things differently. And you’re not ever gonna get hung up with bureaucracy. And yeah,
Jye Smith
it is interesting that like, even here, like it’s, we say, there’s no politics, but there are family fights. There’s plenty of this. And we’ll be close. And
Chris Grant
you know, 20s that number where that can happen? I think, yeah.
Jye Smith
And you know, sometimes, you know, we meet people, we interview people, and just kind of where it’s going, like question, like, what’s my career, and I’m like, I don’t know, just do whatever you want. Like, I’m really good at this, I’ll pay some more money and keep going. And then it becomes this, this this tassel that there’s this tug of war between. I want to feel like it’s a grown up company. But also I really don’t want to feel like it’s growing up company. Because once that happens, suddenly the culture starts breaking. Or they’re kinda you know, you kind of spoke around your anti corporate principle. There are other corporate other principles that you kind of want to keep going as you have a bit of a, you know, a culture book. We spoke to a young Henry’s last week and they are fiercely fiercely Yeah, okay. Yeah, we’ve
Chris Grant
had a few shirts off beer pong games, that young hitters. Like the culture
Cam Grant
where, where I guess we’re feeling our way along as we go. Like, we haven’t sat down and specifically developed like brand guidelines or culture or anything, we’ve been sort of heads down running since we started. But it’s been implicit in the way that we that we have been building everything and work with the team. So like creativity and collaboration, and one of the key things like, we want to think from the nine to five, you kind of, like, it’s embedded in you to be fearful of sharing your opinions and sharing your ideas, because it’s kind of, they always get mushed down or like people think, you know, they’re stupid and things. So we’re trying to build a, like a safe environment that people share as many random shitty ideas as possible, because some of them are awesome, then they don’t realise it. Initiative
Chris Grant
is something that we’ve actually, specifically try and target in in our eyes and something that that we want to foster, you know, people that have the ability and are willing to try new things and you know, break barriers and do what they think is right. We
Cam Grant
also send like, everyone goes down to the cabins every now and then. And then we also have like, an extra week a year of holidays, like basically a mini sabbatical where they just had a way somewhere on the wilderness. Yeah. And that’s like, basically, it’s kind of like I guess, work in the sense that they have to do it. It’s not bad. I’m gonna go away good.
Alex Adams
Has it been a moment that you guys have been particularly proud of like, if you had your proudest sort of moment of you individually?
Chris Grant
I would say it’s been such constant hustle that we we haven’t I mean, we’ve we’ve tried to enjoy the winds, you know, when we get a new cabin set up, and we can we can go and stand 100 metres away and just look at it there in the forest. Yeah. I think those particular moments we’ve really loved in terms of sort of larger wins. I think it’s just step by step at the moment so that they’re all smaller steps in a larger piece.
Cam Grant
Yeah, it’s kind of the same. There’s no There’s no like pivotal moments, but it’s kind of when you do stop to, I guess, like, breathe for a second. Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of the fact that yeah, you know, we’ve been doing this for a couple of years. We’ve got some staff. We’ve got six Kevin’s out there. We’ve got all this press, and we’ve got a shitload of really stoked customers and a big community and you kind of sit back and you think that’s yeah, that’s pretty cool.
Chris Grant
Yeah, we work seven days a week, really. But we do love what we’re doing. And we do every now and again, get a chance to stop and say yeah, hey, this is pretty awesome. Yeah, it
Cam Grant
was one time actually, when we were we launched to Melbourne Kevin’s in midwinter last year and it was like, the coldest winter Melbourne has had for I don’t know, they say that all the time. Yes,
Jye Smith
every year. It’s like
Cam Grant
we sure this time was real. Yeah.
Jye Smith
We mean last time, yeah, it felt like it was
Cam Grant
like we were still setting it up quite manually. So he could learn all the processes and then move as we get to this next stage and sort of hit go to scale. And we’re digging a grey water trench in frozen ground in like minus three degree weather in clothes that were not appropriate for her and it sucks but then you kind of look up and you’d see this mountain range behind you and you’d see the cabin and you’d be like actually this is better than sitting at a desk doing some project that I don’t give a shit about Yeah,
Jye Smith
I got a question for you guys handy and like, like well versed and construction everything beforehand and we guys kind of like the rest of us and like if something breaks like I feel really proud after I’ve used a screwdriver one fucking Bob the Builder here.
Chris Grant
Hmm probably closer to the ladder I’d say although our dad’s super handy so hopefully we had it in somewhere yeah,
Cam Grant
it will yeah he was super handy and take stuff out put it back together but I think he tried to teach us back when we were kids but being twin boys I think as soon as we went down to the workshop we started whacking each other with hammers and shit he’s like Yes No Yeah, so we’ve got like a curiosity for finding that stuff out and we’ve got a lot more handy we own a lot more hammers now.
Jye Smith
Have a tool belt. I’ve always wanted to in a tool belt. Here
Alex Adams
my might go on it 20 Bingo tonight
Jye Smith
how are you planning to grow How big do you want this to be? Do you want it big?
Cam Grant
Well, I guess we don’t know is the short answer but we’re gonna make it big enough that enough people like us can get away when they need it.
Alex Adams
You guys are booked out every weekend for like she’ll December pretty
Cam Grant
even midweek I don’t think Miguel one of our cabins has a free day for like the next three months. Like it’s
Chris Grant
a waitlist waiting for weekend. So really, we would love to finish camp sentence there we would love enough cabins available to be able to have access for cabins when people need them because that was that that was our original goal was in a camp to to when we were sitting in our in our office you know at 10pm going you know she hit a brick wall I need to get out of the city then you could you can jump on our website and you can find a cabin and just drive two hours isn’t a couple of podcasts and then be in the middle of nowhere and be able to just take a breather and then come back and be twice as productive as you recommend
Jye Smith
podcasts for your prescription
Alex Adams
yeah
Cam Grant
yeah, yes it sounds like you know we’ll have outside each major city really because we want to do it everywhere and then some other like more unique cool locations as well. And I mean, we just want to keep it keep it tight though. We don’t want to you know, go put the foot down and go like 3000 or anything like that like That’s insane. We want to keep it authentic keep it ourselves and just make sure we’re having fun and doing random stuff while we’re doing it.
Jye Smith
We’ve got some wicked property sir. Yeah. Wow. Please put the theme on when people walk in
Alex Adams
wonderful guys, thank you so much. I’m definitely feeling very inspired to get out into nature and plan a little trip one of my goals this year is to do an overnight hike to actually hiking pitch a tent and do that so yeah, I might do that once but for every other time I’m gonna be using on your Yeah, please get your prescription. Right. I know. I know. I’m so excited actually. Yeah, I was like when can I actually book in and then you guys are booked out so I might have to try and get away midweek Yeah, just let us know
Chris Grant
when you thinking we can have
Cam Grant
Yeah, you can like we I mean we but then a lot of other people do actually go down to work. So you can only one of them has no reception. Okay, you can hotspot your phone and like we have quite a lot of creatives freelancers going down to actually get into a different creative mind space and stuff down.
Alex Adams
Is this what I get scared? Is it does it feel a bit off creaky if you go by yourself? Or do
Chris Grant
you go with Yeah. The properties are super, super safe. They’re privately owned properties. We were partners with the there’s no one else. Young women
Alex Adams
really covering that.
And if people want to discover you, and I felt like we really loved Kevin Pom, but if they want to follow you on Instagram, they can look at what’s your Instagram handle?
Cam Grant
It’s on your code. Yep. And you’re just on your tacos, our website
Alex Adams
as well. Wonderful and it’s in Sydney, Melbourne at the moment. You’ve got cabines
Cam Grant
Sydney, Melbourne, other areas opening very soon. Okay, watch his face.
Alex Adams
Wonderful. Thank you so much, guys. And thank you for listening to Maker and Creator. We are into Season Two. Maybe go back and listen to season one. If you haven’t listened to any of our episodes, which episode would you recommend? Um, you know, I really like it’s quite a long episode, but I quite liked the Peter. Peter excellent episode who founded the ARIA awards. I thought that was really fascinating. I listened
Jye Smith
to Tamsin again because she was in for the emergence of underground underground cinema. It was really good. I forgot how well she unpacked that thinking and just doing something that on that bigger scale, like it was really
Alex Adams
good. Yeah. I love that. And actually, they’ve just produced Eddie dancing. Yeah, in Melbourne. So yeah, there’s there’s plenty of good ones on there. And yeah, that’s it for now. If you want to hit us up, you can find Jye he’s at doublestar. Co. I’m Ms. Darlinghurst. That’s it for us. We’ll see you next week. Thanks, guys. Cheers. Thank you
