A Listener Production.
G'day, it's Luke Darson.
The idea of self-improvement and leadership both on and off the field
has been a lifelong passion of mine.
With one of my oldest friends, we created a leader collective
and have had the privilege of working with thousands of leaders
in education, sport, industry and the arts
that have helped shift to what we see as the 21st century style of leadership
where everyone has a voice.
In this podcast, we hear stories from these iconic leaders.
In 1997, Andrew Bassett alongside his brother Paul
and partner Matt Rockman founded SEEK.
SEEK quickly became the market leader in the online employment space,
expanding operations across the Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions.
The concept being to make it easier and quicker for candidates
and hirers to connect by moving print newspaper job ads online.
In the 22 years that Andrew served as SEEK's CEO,
it grew into one of Australia's top 50 listed companies,
employing more than 3,000 people across the globe.
SEEK's clear purpose is helping people live more fulfilling and productive lives
while helping organisations to succeed.
SEEK has exposure to more than 900 million people
and a market capitalisation now in excess of $10 billion.
Andrew Bassett is also currently the president of the St Kilda Football Club.
Andrew, it's great to meet you in person.
Thanks for your time today.
The legend has it that SEEK was born out of the frustration of your brother Paul
trying to buy a house.
Can I go back and find out if that's true
and how did that happen?
Did the story begin?
No, that's right.
I can barely remember it,
but that's Paul was looking for a house,
finding the process frustrating.
And yeah, definitely felt that online was the way
that houses would be searched for in time.
Spoke to me that night and we spent six months considering it.
So why then did you go down the employment path
rather than real estate path,
given that was the origin of the story?
Yeah, we started doing a business case
and I think the plan was always each of real estate,
employment and cars.
We just never got to the other two thirds of our business.
So we just went with the plan.
So we just never got to the other two thirds of our business.
And we just decided employment first.
Partly it was a bigger market.
Partly we felt it was more amenable to online.
We probably got that part wrong.
And partly, to be honest,
we just liked the idea of helping people find jobs
a little bit more purposeful
than helping people find houses.
So that was why we decided jobs first,
not jobs only, as I said.
Well, that's fascinating.
So in your original business case,
you picked it all effectively.
You realised that the online real estate market,
which became a massive, massive business
and car sales, we know,
that brand extraordinarily well.
So you always intended to go back.
Perhaps your success in the employment space
was so good you didn't get around to it.
Is that how you feel about it?
Yeah, no, I think for probably four or five years,
we still thought we'd go to the other categories.
But then we just saw so much growth in employment
and also the logic of them being together
and the classifieds started to fall apart a little bit.
Once you went online,
because you can go much more deep into the value chain
and the deeper parts of the value chain of employment,
cars and real estate is actually quite different.
So we started going,
going to things like education
rather than going to things like cars and real estate.
I want to talk to you about education at some stage,
but I read that when you started
and founded Seek back in 1997,
that you self-confessed
that I had very little knowledge of the internet.
Yeah, no, it's all true.
I'd never used the internet
when Paul approached me that night.
So I only really started to use the internet
and learn about it as part of the business case,
And Paul, Matt and I,
none of us really had any tech experience.
None of us really had any proper business experience.
So we were all sort of making it up as we went along.
It's an extraordinary story to me
to create a business model
and to have the foresight
for someone that I hadn't even used.
And people listening to this will,
it's not that long ago, 1997,
when you think about it,
that the internet was this thing.
No one really knew it was going to end up,
but somewhere deep within that partnership,
you guys had a sense that you're on the edge
of being able to disrupt.
Yeah, foresight might be generous.
I think there's a fair bit of naivety
and a fair bit of sort of youthful exuberance
in terms of let's have a crack at this thing
rather than certain,
it would make the thing work.
But yeah, we just,
the concept that actually,
once I understood online,
that this stuff would move online over time
was pretty clear.
So the hard question was,
how would we win?
And how could we be successful against Fairfax,
against the international competition?
That was the tough part.
Yeah, you took some risks, didn't you?
And you just mentioned then,
you know, you're taking on the giant that Fairfax,
they're a massive, massive organisation.
News Corp is Rupert Murdoch,
plays for keeps Rupert from what we understand.
And they weren't going to be overly fond of,
you know, a couple of upstarts disrupting.
they called it the rivers of gold in newspapers,
So what sort of pushback did you get
from those competitors?
we, just coming back to the decision,
which just sort of started with,
we knew it was a winner tax all market.
We knew that one person would do very,
Sometimes in classifiers,
there's a second prize,
but usually there's not.
And there's almost never a third prize.
So the tough thing was we knew we had to beat the newspapers,
not just come third.
If that made sense.
They were the thing that got us over the line and fair to say,
we weren't sure we'd win,
but we thought we could have a crack at it was all we needed to,
to have take the chance was the view that getting it right in terms of
the disruption as a newspaper play would be pretty tough.
Cause one thing to talk the language of,
if we don't cannibalise ourself,
somebody else will.
But the timing of when you,
you actually pull the ball at the nature of how you do it,
moving from a world where,
the rivers of gold were enormous revenue stream and knowing that online would
mean the revenue stream was probably much smaller.
That's a tough game to play as a newspaper when you've got,
shareholders or public or otherwise who care a lot about the annual profit.
So it was always going to be tough for them to manage that transition.
Whereas we turned up to work every day thinking,
how do we use the technology to make the most efficient marketplace?
They turned up to work every day thinking,
how do we stop the technology damaging,
our rivers of gold,
very different set of problems.
So it's not surprising that we solved it better than they did.
so why in a competitive market like that,
other classified online sites were emerging everywhere.
There were competitors everywhere.
When you look back,
why did you and Seek succeed?
there's a few things.
I think we probably had a hundred competitors when we started.
when we went to people with that business plan,
it definitely needed a bit of a leap of faith is you've got the newspapers
already online monster.
That was the global leader.
Certainly the leader in the U S was already in Australia.
about a hundred other competitors say,
we certainly weren't the first.
The balance between taking advantage of the technology,
but recognizing this was not a small game that we had to win.
This wasn't just about,
building with a little bit of capital and getting a bit more money than
going from there.
We had to sprint.
We had to raise a lot of capital,
have any chance of being in the newspapers.
We had to be really focused on the marketplace and building the
getting all the job seekers,
getting all the job ads rather than on trying to make money in the short
And I think we've got a lot of,
a lot of things wrong,
but we've got those broad concepts,
Of needing to sprint crap,
the marketplace first being the first to have a viable marketplace.
And then you can keep people and get momentum.
Whereas if you're trying to bootstrap and it goes small,
you won't get there.
And the other piece is if you just really like it with the
we had just really passionate,
committed people who fought no less ownership than the three of
worked just as hard for it to parent,
a fraction of the rewards and success.
So we're very fortunate with that people.
you mentioned the need to sprint as a competitive advantage there,
and you needed to inject some capital to,
to get it viable.
And you went to one of the wealthiest families in Australia,
the Packer family took a,
I think it was 2003 for $33 million.
James Packer takes a seat on the,
on the seat board.
Tell us about that process.
obviously that's a big sell to a family like that,
who are sophisticated investors.
And what was it like having James on your board?
how did that relationship evolve?
that came a bit later.
So John threw to about,
I think that was about a third or fourth round.
so we had a few high net worths on the way through a few
And then James came in about a third or fourth round.
And there was a bit of scepticism,
but there's all sorts of stories,
about the Packer family.
but we met James and it was quite a disarming conversation
because what had happened a few years earlier is PBL had
been our partner,
but they then went and did a JV with Monster who at the
time was our most serious competition.
So we'd been fiercely in competition with the,
with PBL and with Monster.
James called us and said,
I think you're going to win.
I want to work with you rather than them.
And he was very disarming.
in terms of I think you're going to take the rivers of
gold and I'd like to be part of that.
and so he really probably was the first person we'd met
who had a more ambitious version of where our business could
get to than we did.
Most of them spoke to people who wanted to invest,
who wanted to buy a part of the business.
We thought the business would grow very,
very fast and they were more sceptical.
James was almost the other way around.
And the more we spent time with James,
the more we liked him.
And he was terrific on the board and he was really good.
He was not only on the board,
he was our chairman for a couple of years.
And he's highly enumerant.
He was very passionate about the business.
He was really good at sort of pushing us to be as
ambitious as we could be,
go as hard and as fast as we could be.
So he was terrific.
the numbers that you read that,
that the eventual stake that was 33 million turned into 440.
And I suppose that,
that helps your relationship.
I think James still likes us.
you always get on,
it's always easier when you make money for people than when
you lose money for people.
I still see James from time to time,
obviously he lives overseas,
he's still going on very well and he's been a very good
that's continued even beyond his investment.
So the reputation you had Andrew as a CEO,
from what I hear from people that have worked at Seek was
that you built a culture that people loved coming to work,
that there was something special about,
you use the word luck and it's interesting.
A lot of the leaders have great success stories like you,
the humility comes through.
They mentioned luck and good timing and,
but I suspect there was a fair bit of sophistication in the
culture you built at Seek.
when you look back,
what did you get right?
it's a good question.
fortunate with our people,
but we have tried to set the coach right.
And I think when we looked at the likes of,
I think it's our nature anyway.
And I think Paul and Matt and I had some different approaches on
but on people were all pretty aligned and the importance of people
and the importance of people and people,
treating people right and caring for people.
But we also recognise at a strategic level that our competitors,
Fairfax News had every possible advantage.
They had all the job ads,
they had all the job seekers,
they had all the money.
and if we were going to beat them,
that would only happen if our people were more passionate,
And that involved just bringing people on board,
empowering people,
caring for them and doing it the right way.
And I think we probably just went straight to the point that we
needed these people and we needed to look after them.
We needed them to love coming to work.
We weren't necessarily able to pay them.
They needed to believe in the vision because we're giving people options
rather than the salary.
And we were well and truly rewarded by the faith that we had in
people by what we got back from those people.
So it became very self-reinforced.
genuinely valuing people rather than pretending to value in people,
recognizing the settings that we needed to put in place to make sure
people did feel empowered and supported.
I don't tend to highlight things that we're proud of stuff,
but in terms of stress,
including most recently in the COVID,
in times of the dot-com crash and other times,
we've gone straight to care for our people at time when other
organizations perhaps go to a different point.
And I think that's really served in good stead in terms of
in terms of people feeling good about how they're valued and
I'd like to delve into that a little bit more,
spoken to Jeff Harris,
who founded Flight Center,
on this podcast and,
and it was almost a cult of Flight Center in the end.
They were really detailed,
the Flight Center balls,
the regular get together.
the Friday night drinks,
it's not as though,
you're reinventing the wheel on connection and bringing people
but there was some systems they were really,
well aware of the size of their teams and they learned and
their franchises,
even though they own most of them at a smaller level.
I spoke to Brian McNamee from CSL,
that business grew to 40,000,
And he walked the floor to speak to every range of
people he could every single day.
were there specific things that,
that you did at Seek that you look back on?
I was going to perhaps talk,
we did different things and I was going to talk to them,
I view this parenting the same way,
that people have got different philosophies and different
practices in terms of how they do it.
85% to being successful or unsuccessful is the
if you're genuine about your care for people rather
than pay lip service to it,
if you continue that through good times and bad,
it will usually come through,
in terms of a happy workforce and a,
and a good culture.
it doesn't matter what you do in terms of the
the Friday night drinks and all the,
all the benefits of your care is not genuine.
it goes up and down depending on what the
business is doing,
you find that those practices don't work.
So there's a bunch of things we did with,
particularly with the,
the company was small.
Everyone knew everyone would have drinks together
We'd play soccer in the halls and throw things
It was a fun culture as well as being one that
focused on the work.
it's less in the practices,
the genuineness of the caring about people and
that theme comes across a lot,
from leaders I speak to in a range of different
areas that genuine care is the term.
and it's interesting because I think the genuine
part is the uncommon part because people
I've got to probably have this,
this perception that looks like I'm investing
But if the authenticity is not there,
we see it with the sporting coaches now more
than ever that the really good ones buy into
their players in a way that is proper and,
and as that served you,
I'm jumping around,
the president of the St Kilda Football Club at
the lessons from Seek,
are they applying well into that role?
I'm sort of finding my feet.
It's been three years now.
I've started to find my feet in the football
It's a little bit different in terms of what's
tough about a football environment.
You would have known this as a player,
and you've known this from your exposure is,
there's only so many people you can employ.
You've got a hard cap,
you've got a soft cap.
And if people come in,
other people need to leave.
the whole system is designed to have people
So some of the things around the care and the,
the long-term positioning that you,
you've got a job,
if you do well and you're pushing hard,
it's only playing football.
It's much more worth this industry.
So how you can get the same level of positivity
in terms of the culture when you can't,
you can't afford to,
or you're not allowed to treat people quite as
well has been one of the challenges for me.
But a lot of the other principles apply.
A lot of the other principles,
open communication,
authenticity that you talk about,
making good decisions rather than terrible
decisions in the process that lead to good
decisions rather than poor decisions.
All those sorts of things I think are very
you've connected millions of people looking for
jobs with the right employers.
And I think anyone who's built anything
and I think anyone who's built anything
and it comes through in your language,
we've got the team right.
We cared for our people,
We built the team.
you must've had some failings and success and
effectively seek is the business of bringing
those people together to try and get that better
than your opposite.
what lessons did you learn from getting the
Someone listening to this,
that's trying to bring teams together.
What's the secret to it?
I'm still learning.
So I tend not to,
I tend to struggle with things like secret
secret success so far.
I'll fall on my face in five minutes.
I look particular,
you asked about the people.
So we had a few learnings all the way through
on the people side,
probably a little,
a little bit this from that.
I tended to not trust my instincts as much as
We tended to be too quick to say we're deaf,
we're desperate for this person or this person
has great skills and we're going to overlook
poor behavior or overlook some of our,
our instincts in the hiring process or how we
feel or some of the feedback we're getting
through beyond the hiring process.
and hang on to people too late,
allow bad behaviors too late,
hire the wrong people,
those sorts of mistakes you make as a startup
when you perhaps don't have as much choice in
when you're scrambling so much that it's hard to
even when you feel somebody is wrong,
all those sorts of things.
We've really learned getting the right people on
board's worth waiting however long you need to,
to make sure you've got the right person.
You don't ignore your instincts when you see the
you deal with them early and hard and all those
We've got so much better at doing than we did in
And that came from a succession of one by one
and lessons that we learned on the way through
that were very painful for us and for others.
So you think in the end,
if there's an instinctive feel that maybe someone's
not the right values and you're seeing some of
those behaviors that,
that may be moving them on and,
and doing that quicker would have been more
Is that something that you do now?
we learned relatively quickly that the easiest
people in some ways,
although really we didn't always get it right,
but people who are bad at their work and bad
people are really,
really easy of course.
It took us a little bit longer to deal with
people who are really good at their job.
but we learned that we absolutely have to deal
with those people early.
The ones we still struggle with are people who
are bad at their work and good people.
that's the hardest category if you're trying to
be a care and kind organization.
So you're incredibly well placed.
this podcast is about empowering leadership and
we're seeing what we think is a trend now
towards really self-reflective,
constant learners in leadership.
you've seen thousands and thousands of people
in every discipline category.
you've got the data on,
what in your mind makes great leadership?
as I said to you in the lead up to this,
I don't talk about this very often.
I think about it not much more,
but you used to with self-awareness,
which is interesting.
And that's the one thing I've actually found,
not just with leaders,
but with people generally,
that it doesn't matter how well performed people
if they're more self-aware,
they're able to take feedback.
and they're passionate and you have always got
to start with passion.
there's a chance to be successful.
Those people that perhaps aren't,
aren't self-aware or won't take feedback almost
They get more successful,
but they get more assured of themselves,
more certain that if anyone gives them feedback,
it's out of jealousy or they don't need to listen
So people kind of do this and go backwards when
they're not that capable.
So I think that self-awareness feedback piece
And the other thing for me that I care about a
when we wanted to reset the attributes of people
for hiring and for performance management,
I wanted one thing in there and one thing only,
which was passion.
and I was told that you can't just have passion.
You also need good judgment and decision-making.
You need other things such as leadership skills
But passion is so important that somebody's
but it spills over sometimes for inappropriate
behaviors or some things you can deal with that
very hard to turn somebody doesn't give a shit
and somebody does.
And that's the piece that I really care about
I wanted to speak to you about passion because
I have read that that is,
a key ingredient in your world.
And I love it because it aligns with,
the way I see the world too.
and I think there are a lot of people out there
that linger in a space that is not full of any
the need to support a lifestyle in our families.
But from your experience,
if you can marry passion with work,
that that's a sweet spot.
Passion with some,
some basic skills.
Passion without skills.
We've seen a bit of that or particularly without
judgment can be problematic,
you can work with that.
And someone who genuinely cares,
they're also going to try to make themselves better.
They're also going to,
they're trying to do what they need to do the
best they can be.
If somebody doesn't care,
as I said before,
not that easy to fix.
You've gone through your own succession planning
handed the reins over to Ian Narev,
who was the former CEO of the Commonwealth Bank.
you've had the foresight after an extended period,
How was that process?
I read that he asked you several times,
are you sure you want to do this?
it's kind of busy.
At some point it's the,
it's the responsible thing to do to think about
succession planning first.
it's been on my mind for some time.
I always wanted to make sure that,
I think the test for me is I'm only going to hand
over when I feel good about keeping most of my
shares and feel more excited about the prospects
of the business than ever,
rather than wanting to hand over at a time when I
was nervous about the prospects of the business.
And Ian's terrific.
Ian joined me in a CRO role effectively.
We got on while he was at the CBA.
We had a few conversations.
We maintained contact in between.
He was extremely impressive bloke.
I kind of knew that he was a guy.
and through all the CBA stuff was doing everything
he could to fix things.
Albert didn't do a 10 out of 10 job,
but did all he could to fix things.
Extremely high integrity guy,
extremely smart guy,
very good leader.
And I probably had,
when we appointed him in the original role,
I probably had 60 or 70 people,
some of whom I knew,
but many of whom I didn't know,
saying that's the greatest appointment I've ever seen.
It probably was one of the best things I've done.
And then once you start working alongside someone
like Ian and you realise that 80% of the job that
he can do so much better than you,
succession planning becomes very,
I love the humility,
great leadership,
always feel like they can hire someone that's,
that's better and smarter and use that language.
Clearly you handed him a fairly established.
It's easier for me to find people who are better
smarter than me than for somebody else.
I suspect that's not the case at all,
but I also fascinated him around,
so seeks this huge,
business that's operating,
with over 3000 employees on a global scale,
but you've carved out a space that you wanted to
separate out from the seek business in the venture
And you mentioned this,
there's some specific pillars you're going after online
education is one of them.
And you want to get back to supporting founders that
were like you and,
and your brother and Matt back in 1997.
Tell us why that's so important for you.
once we sort of worked on the succession path and I
had some really good conversations and there was a
bunch of assets we've been investing in,
in contingent employment,
originally with the view,
that some of those assets would fit with sake over
The more we pushed down that path,
the more we saw there was some synergies in there,
but this was just a separate pool of assets.
It probably didn't make sense for sake longterm.
Some of the shareholders were getting frustrated with,
the losses growing,
which makes sense for these business because we believe they
should continue to invest,
in a bright future as we lost money for a long
So it kind of made sense for sake to think about
I really enjoy working with founders.
I really enjoy working with perhaps more early stage,
dynamic businesses facing more strategic challenges than some of the
operational challenges of big business,
which is so much better suited to generally than I am.
So it kind of just worked for sake.
It worked for me and I've enjoyed it.
I think it's been good for all of us.
and I'm starting to enjoy it.
And if people out there listing that,
I want to start a business or want to get
into the entrepreneurial space.
So what's your advice?
Lots of people will give the data and tell you how
many of them fail.
clearly you're backing people,
what you've created.
what would you say to someone who wants to go
It's a tough question because it's,
I think the thing that tends to separate people that
do take the plunge from those that don't,
it's in particular things about assessment of risk,
So I think entrepreneurs tend to be aware of risks,
but they're willing to take them and recognize there's a
there was probably a very hard chance that business would
but we thought we'll survive.
We'll go back to our job with our tail between the
but we'll survive.
We're okay with that.
So I think that there tends to be a,
for some people who don't take the plunge,
this fear that if this goes wrong,
life will be horrible and I won't be able to deal
So you can't necessarily change that,
but if you're on the fence,
usually I'd just encourage people to just do it and
If you try and fail and get up again and have a
I think Australia is very accepting of that,
give you a chance.
And so typically just if you're thinking about it,
provided you've got a good idea.
I do challenge people when they come to me for
you need to be solving a real problem.
You need to be doing it,
for the right reasons if you're doing it to make
money and then can work.
if you're doing it because you really think there's
this problem that you're passionate about solving
and you've got a,
a good thought to take that forward or,
and the rest of it,
so it's doing it for the right reasons and being
aware of the risks.
Going back to your original partnership,
did you get some great advice?
Was there a particular great mentor and probably a
supplementary part to that?
You're in business with your brother.
So the family part,
and Matt Rockman obviously as well.
Was there moments that partnership had,
had challenges or did it just gel straight away?
and did you get any specific great advice?
we never really had great mentors.
I think when we started,
it was really early.
So I think it was starting to happen in the US
in terms of people leaving their job to these,
do these sorts of things.
there wasn't too much of that in Australia.
Probably the one example actually was Paul might give
a different answer here because he had a relationship
with Evan Thornley who started Look Smart,
which perhaps opened Paul's eyes to the opportunity a
everyone I spoke to,
but why the hell would you,
why the hell would you leave a secure job to do
something like this?
So there wasn't so much in the mentoring space on the
we were lucky because I think none of us were,
I think it's fair to say the other two might not
like me saying it,
but none of us were anywhere near equipped to run
something like this on our own.
we all have quite different skills,
but we had all had quite big gaps in our skillset.
The three of us between us,
I think made a good leader.
And then we learned from each other and we learned
from the experience.
I think we all got better.
As leaders in our own right.
So I think the fact that we had high degree of
which is important,
and complimentary skills made it far easier than
would have any of us try to do it on our own.
I've heard this ringing my ears again.
I love the opportunity to speak to people like you
because the lessons are so profound,
but the great partnership,
got to have that complimentary capabilities and shared values
without those things.
You're probably in trouble when it sounds like you've
And the shared values I left off,
but it is important.
you're doing a better job.
I've managed for my question than I am.
So thank you very much for that Luke,
but the you're right.
And that's where the trust comes in because you knew
the values were high.
We had a high degree of confidence in that.
So people look at,
started in 97 and seek,
$10 billion business and an extraordinary success story
you go back to 2011,
the emergence of LinkedIn and I read with interest,
I think I'll quote some of your language.
We had to change everything about our business to survive.
If we didn't move fast,
we would have been stuffed.
That that's probably an untold story in my mind.
I was a bit surprised when I read it.
how big a challenge was that?
it was pretty tough.
that was actually extremely well done.
Paul is clearly smarter than me,
but that was just after Paul left.
and so Paul left effectively the end of 2010.
This is your brother,
I became so CEO and probably I was spending more of my
time outside the core business.
And I sort of refocused on the core business.
And what became obvious early in 2011,
is that LinkedIn had,
many more people than us in employment,
registered employment,
that we had much more data about those people and was
working hard to get the ads,
indeed had many more job ads than us through scraping and
was working really hard to get the people.
When you say scraping,
what does that mean?
Scraping basically means putting the ads on the site for
I'm extracting the data.
I actually don't even know the technical,
I don't even know how it works technically.
That's not my skillset,
but pulling data off,
off company websites and putting on their own website
effectively for free.
So they had all the free ads and more than us.
We always thought that our moats were,
once you have all the job ads,
you can't get all the job seekers and vice versa.
But what each of LinkedIn indeed have done and taken one
piece of that without the other that made them very threatening.
The other thing we found was we started to realize that
product and tech was going to become the new battleground.
If these guys are outspending it through a scale of 30
and we were to be frank,
three out of 10 in product and tech at best,
and these guys were really good at massively bigger.
So we really had to solve that problem from a low
We really had to take on the fight,
we could have run,
from the fight and there were ways we could have run
but it wasn't really our nature.
we took the file up directly.
I spent the first six months,
thinking that we were going to struggle to win.
And so I thought we were stuffed.
so I've said it later,
but I couldn't tell him when I thought we were stuffed to
I can now say it.
So my job in the company was,
we're going to find his,
how we're going to fight.
I'm going to win.
I was not that confident to be frank.
in those moments as a leader,
you've got a lot of people then under your care.
So there was a chance in your mind,
if you didn't get that right,
seek is no longer a viable option.
it becomes a $3 share price run.
The $30 share price was to be frank,
and to be honest,
I was so focused on doing whatever we could.
It became clear after about three months,
how we should respond and what we needed to do.
The execution challenge was enormous.
We knew what we had to do.
So the overwhelming focus for all of us in my job
was to never show that doubt was to just fight that
And I couldn't be prouder.
it was much more other people.
we'd still know nothing about product and tech and
all those sorts of things with a bunch of people
who led those areas and did it beautifully and
beyond all my expectations.
we're so focused on fighting that fight.
You can't worry too much about losing it.
Just to digress a bit from that.
And you said something,
you said a lot of very profound things,
when people come to you and an idea to make money
say not interested,
you're solving a world problem.
You're solving an issue,
which is effectively,
if you read the values of,
which I mentioned a little earlier,
that that's where you guys started out wanting to
Why then education and online education as a,
as one of the pillars that you're focused on now,
what are you trying to solve there?
what are some examples of it?
I'll come to that.
So your first point is really important.
We haven't got to before,
which is around the focus on other stuff rather than
And even as a business,
every time we felt shareholder pressure or some other
reason why we should focus on money and stopped focus
on the fundamentals of the business and building the
the fundamentals went backwards.
we didn't make any more money.
And every time we corrected ourselves and reinforced that
focus on the fundamentals,
we found the fundamentals grew and we made money quicker
than we expected.
so really this focus on whatever the fundamentals of your
business are and then revenue,
and then from there,
profit at the output of that labor,
rather than the focus for me,
it's just an essential business.
And I think that's one of the things we bring to the
new businesses that we invest in specifically in education.
we stumbled in there to be frank,
we stumbled in there because a lot of education providers,
once we grew our audience,
we're knocking on our door saying that we would love to
get access to your audience because it's a very relevant context.
and we set up an area of the site that allowed people
to connect with education providers.
It was so buried.
I couldn't even find the damn thing,
but somehow we were driving decent volumes to these education
And we sort of started to realize the connection between
employment and education as being a very strong one.
We realized that education had all sorts of problems.
That needed to be solved that we actually had some unique
So we still know,
better than anyone,
where all the shortages are for candidates,
where there's roles,
but no candidates and where there's a skill gap.
And therefore what education need to fill that skill gap and
all sorts of similar aspects that we bring,
we felt we had a right to play in that space.
And education has been very successful for us.
And you link that back,
you're a father of four and I I'll make that link now.
and your philosophies in,
I love asking the parenting question as a father of four as
Are they the same?
Do they cross over in to the way that you've,
my employees are probably more kind about me than my children
so they might have some more,
they probably see more,
the more warts and all version of me,
my kids are between 22 and 15.
It's a mixed view,
you try to parent the same way.
And I'm probably,
I'm probably too,
you try to just do what,
And I think SEEK has mostly,
you talked about authenticity before.
We've done our best to just be honest with people,
focus on the things that are important and discard the things
that are less important.
We've tried with our kids to do the same,
certainly plenty of love,
plenty of attention and time.
And they're a work in progress to whether we've done a good
it's always a work in progress.
I love asking that question because I think it's a discussion
that we don't have enough.
It certainly gets some feedback from mine too.
I think they are pretty harsh on me.
We've been identifying through that conversations,
with what we think dimensions of great leadership look like.
And so please be expansive on this or as condensed as you
but we see great leaders have a concept of self-leadership
Does that term resonate with you?
And what does it mean when I say that to you?
Looking after myself and doing that stuff,
probably I don't do as well as I should have.
I tend to be kind of task focused on doing the,
what I need to do for the business and then family focused.
then the other stuff and football football club comes in there as well.
there's definitely something about setting the right example.
we've mostly done this reasonably well at SEEK and when in 2011,
we sort of re-articulated the values and we had a fresh cut at it.
It was really important to us that there was the,
we were sort of describing the behaviors of the exec as well as what we were
asking for from the staff and the worst thing you can possibly do.
And I saw it in my two previous employers is the values of,
one thing or what you're espousing is one thing and the behaviors of the
leaders is something quite different.
People aren't stupid.
People pick that up and it becomes a,
it's worse than not having it if the leaders aren't living those values and,
and exhibiting those behaviors.
perhaps not fully understanding the term.
That's what you're getting at.
We do pretty well.
I was looking after myself so I can be the best I can be.
I do a poor job at that.
I think your humility is just so extreme,
that you're probably not allowing yourself to reflect on that because,
in doing some research,
I spoke to some people that have worked under your leadership and they say it
is an extraordinary place to work because you've created that environment.
It's fascinating to hear that,
you did work as a consultant,
you have worked in professional firms before.
Did you see that gap between leaders not living values?
Was that a conscious thing for you when you became the leader of a big
I should probably be careful with that.
There were some good people at my former employers and some bad people.
That's always the case.
there were quite a few examples of people saying one thing and doing another
that really struck me and the hypocrisy really struck me a lot in terms of I knew
how demotivating that was for me.
I knew how frustrating that was for me.
And perhaps I had the advantage or disadvantage,
but probably as an advantage in hindsight and going from being very low on the
totem pole to overnight becoming one of the leaders in the organization and not
any perhaps retraining through middle management where moving from behaving like
seeing things like that to that get retrained out if you,
something similar.
some of the things that struck with me with a negative example that I said,
I just don't want to be the leader that's doing that.
And I want to be,
if I say something,
I want to be trying to do it.
if I'm asking something from somebody,
I want to be doing it myself.
So perhaps the small time gap between being on the bottom and being on the top
assisted me to be a less hypocritical leader.
that's a unique perspective.
And that to me is,
is a really great form of self leadership.
as we started that,
we see leaders in other dimension,
they're really conscious of how they positively impact others in the environment that they're
Is that something you go,
go thought to along the way in terms of the impact of the environment in terms of your
impact on other people around you in a positive way?
I probably underestimated it for a long time.
I've been fortunate to be surrounded by some good people who,
which is a lucky,
lucky piece who will be honest with me.
you're always better off having people to be honest with you and those who weren't.
And I'm probably part of the feedback I've got that I've now appreciated much better
I have a bigger impact than I realized I had in terms of what I say and what I do or
the conversations I might have with people.
So I've tried to,
I still don't probably maximize that,
but I now understand it better than I did.
and therefore trying to use whatever power I have more effectively for good,
And I've heard that a lot about you,
over the journey and even in your role at St Kilda.
Footy clubs are unique places.
but that you very much,
collaborative people feel like they get a voice in the environment.
you celebrate people who,
who work closely around you and that it,
it sort of comes naturally to you.
I've got all the answers and I'm sitting at the top of the hierarchy,
which we see as sort of the old version of leadership.
it's a bit easier when you don't have many answers to,
to get help in getting the answer.
I think I've experienced,
the smartest people sometimes that I've,
I've seen on the journey because they're so smart.
sometimes don't realise the benefit of just the debate and the challenge that they can get.
And therefore they know all the answers.
Therefore they don't have to listen to anyone else.
And so many of the careers of those people I've seen get derailed relative to the people,
perhaps who aren't as smart,
who perhaps don't have as many of the answers,
but are willing to listen.
And you're seeing that in a football environment.
You're seeing that with things like coaches,
the coach that listened versus the,
the old all powerful coach.
You're starting to see it's more of a team solution than a,
an individual person solution.
And we see leaders are really conscious,
about their ability to create and,
and share a vision.
was a big vision.
You said a hundred competitors taking on some of the most powerful cash,
full organisations,
as we mentioned with Fairfax and,
and Rupert Murdoch's News Limited.
how did you go about creating and,
and sharing that vision consciously?
it's sort of one step at a time,
a competitor doesn't move.
It's funny because we look back with fondness at competing with Fairfax and News,
we're now competing with Google and,
and some other organisations.
I long for the day to compete with Fairfax and News,
if that makes sense.
it's just focusing on what you do.
we do tend to obsess,
I tend to obsess about the defensible and sustainability of businesses,
recognising that people are going to come after you as you,
as you get bigger,
and there's going to be some of the things that you're doing can become commoditised.
And what are going to be our barriers?
What's going to be the things that protect us?
And I think we've always felt particularly in our space,
and probably 2011 or so,
I won't go back over the detail of that,
but that was a worrying period.
Since probably about 2013,
when we knew that,
we were starting to win the tech battle.
Winning and losing feels like it's in our hands.
Ian and I have expressed it very well.
if we win our A-game,
there's no doubt,
if we play our A-game,
there's no doubt we'll be successful.
But we have to play our A-game.
So we're a little bit more able to focus on ourselves rather than worrying about competitors.
And did you always say it,
and even jumping off there,
this business that was,
a lifelong business,
most people would have had the,
the temptation Andrew,
along the way too,
there would have been some significant,
was that a conscious decision?
when we originally jetted,
it was something that we thought was,
that was what internet businesses were when we started.
more than the next three to five years.
But at every single stage, there's either been challenges like the LinkedIn
indeed or some of the other challenges we had that I thought there's no,
I couldn't possibly step off at this point other than fight that battle.
Or there's been fun ahead of us because we've fought the battle,
we've won the battle and we've got the next set of growth or something similar.
So there's always been enough excitement to keep me engaged for a long period
of time until more recently.
Having said that, I've still remained very close to CEC.
I still remain on the board.
And I, to be frank, work more in partnership.
He runs the much harder, much bigger business and I'm running the thing
When we see leaders regularly talk about curiosity as a means to how they
continue to learn and improve, does curiosity ring true with you
and the way you've approached things?
On that dimension, I probably would rank a lot lower than many of the CEOs
I know, you know, who read a lot or network a lot or the rest.
But I tend to be a bit more disciplined.
I'm just task-focused in dealing.
When I say task-focused, that's usually thinking about the strategy
and you usually think about the business.
And perhaps the strength and weakness of CEC is we're really always charting
our own path and we really haven't sought the advice of others or looked
at other companies and said, what have other companies doing?
This is going to be how we do things.
We try to solve problems a little bit from the ground up and with our own view.
But probably as a result of that, I've missed out on some learning
that we might have got by being more out there.
So it's never really been my strength, to be honest.
You know yourself so well.
And you can articulate it so well and so matter-of-factly.
Yeah, I've had plenty of time to come to terms with my weaknesses.
I'm into celebrating the success story, which is one of the great success
stories in Australian business history.
In my mind, we see leaders are really conscious about how they communicate
and really strategic about communicating with clarity.
How have you gone about that?
Yeah, again, probably not the most polished, as you're picking up now,
I think we've just tried to be pretty direct.
So I think the one thing that has served us in good stead is internally,
externally, you can't always talk about everything.
There's some things that are off the table.
But within those realms of what's off the table, we always try to be honest.
I always try to avoid spin.
I always try to run to promise and open deliver.
And if you get those things right, I think it's probably similar to what we
talked about before about the 85% or whatever number I gave you.
If you get those things right, you're not going to be too badly off.
So despite the lack of polish and eloquence and general communication skills, and
sometimes we get wrong, the frequency of communication, if you get those things
wrong, it's a bit harder.
But you can see your values always come through in every area of dimension we've
talked about, honesty and integrity and giving people the best option they can
We see leaders are really valued collaboration maybe more than ever in
I mean, how have you thought about collaboration?
It's kind of funny because I'm sort of thinking back and I'm going back
We're probably a bit slow because when you're small and it's really easy,
communication's really easy because everyone knows everything and
collaboration's really easy, but it's small, so I think.
I'm going to give a much worse answer.
This is one of the many examples where someone like Ian really thinks about
this in detail and we've got this massive unification project, which is
bringing together our technology in Australia, which is quite different
from technology in Asia.
In fact, there's two different technologies in Asia.
We're bringing it all together.
We're sort of moving towards one organisation.
There's a massive amount of collaboration needed in terms of the actual
techniques to deal with it.
That's someone else.
So what I've realised is some of the things around communication, I used to
hate the word process.
I still do, but what I've learnt is that these things are important once you
get bigger and I've been able to hire people who understand how to actually
That's about all I can really say to you.
I'm sorry, but I've got no more for you.
It's a brilliant answer.
I'll be interested in your final two questions I've been asking.
All the leaders I've had the privilege of speaking to and I've thoroughly
enjoyed the experience today.
Who's been the greatest leader in your life, Andrew?
You know, it's kind of, I get tripped up on this all the time in terms of
who's the role model, who do you look up to?
And it's kind of the snippets that you see of someone that you say is,
okay, that's remarkable, that's impressive.
But then there's other aspects of their personality that you sort of say
that's less impressive.
So you, you know.
The extreme version is Elon Musk.
I don't think he's an impressive person at the 80%,
but some of what he does is unbelievable, right?
And so I tend to more look at bits and pieces of people and say,
okay, that's a really impressive trade or what they've done in this
particular circumstance impresses me.
There's not too many people I've looked to and said,
this is the perfect leader.
And I think, again, that's the insularity, not insularity is the wrong
word, but that's the not being too obsessive and curious and focused on
other people versus focused on what I'm doing, if that makes sense.
Yeah, it does make sense.
I have to draw back.
That's not an answer to be clear, yes.
No, it's a great answer because it's authentic.
You know, you're not, you weren't going to say someone for the sake of
I'd be making up.
I don't have anyone.
I have no candidates.
And I love that success takes different paths and, and, and clearly you've
treaded your own path, but put people around you and in other areas that,
that fulfill the things.
You've clearly got an incredible skill.
I've got to ask you, Elon Musk, 80% doesn't impress you.
What, what, what, what are the things about him?
Oh, I just, I just put it back.
I regret saying anyone, but I've got, I've got absolutely no one at the top
And I think I was just trying to make the point to be honest.
I chose a poor example.
I was trying to make the point that mostly leaders have got some good things
and bad things, myself included.
And so picking a leader and saying they're perfect, there's no one I've seen
that I've elevated to that level.
He has to be a fascinating person though, doesn't he?
In what, in what he's doing.
The reason I'm trying to, again, give you a non-answer and move away from the
question you asked is, is I just don't know enough.
But he's been in the, he's been in the news a little bit lately.
So it's sort of front of mind with the Twitter.
He's a fascinating person.
And he's a person you start to wonder whether, whether Hubis has got,
you know, yeah, we'll find out, we'll find out at the time of the track.
But he's been, he's changed the world in a big way.
And so he's, he's got to earn some respect for that.
Clearly in the, in the tech sector and, you know, front of mind for a lot of
reasons, including, you know, buying Twitter with cash in recent times is an
interesting thing.
And this will be interesting because I suspect I might get a similar answer
from you, but we, if you could collaborate with one person, I mean, you've
brought in a CEO.
So clearly you think about that on any area of your life.
I mean, football, Sikh, family.
Is there any one that you've looked at and thought, God, that'd be a great
And again, again, I'm going to, you know, like I'm loving working with Ian.
There's a bunch of people I've loved working with in the past that, so I'm not
going to, I'm not going to replace them with anyone else.
I'm sorry to keep that.
I think you're going to cut this down to about two minutes given I've avoided
all of your questions, but yeah, there's no one I'm going to really pick up.
And I've been fortunate to meet some really interesting people.
I've been fortunate to work with some incredible people.
So there's not too much.
I've sort of learned, I've given up on my FOMO many years ago.
That makes sense.
There's not too much I'm feeling, geez, I wish I could work with that person
instead of the people I'm working with.
Well, it's a great answer, Andrew, and it's authentically yourself.
And, you know, the space that you guys have created is unique.
It's a brilliant story.
It's been hard prizing out of you because we see great leaders as incredibly
humble as well, and your humility is quite almost at the next level.
So I appreciate your time.
Thanks for the lessons.
There's been many out of it, and good luck.
I can see the passion for St Kilda.
It's at a club at another level, but I can see if you can get that one
to achieve, that might be as fun a day as you can have.
So good luck with that, and thanks for your time today.
That's been great.
Really enjoyed talking.
Empowering Leaders was presented by me, Luke Darcy, produced by Matt Dwyer,
with audio production by Darcy Thompson.
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