159 Mia Freedman A Candid Conversation With The Creative Force Behind Mamamia

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I'm Mark Boris and this is Straight Talk.

Can you just take me quickly inside a woman's world, the women's world?

Let's go.

Mia Freeman.

Hello, Mark Boris.

Hello. Welcome to Straight Talk.

Thanks for having me on Straight Talk.

I was fascinated always in the news and information.

And what we would now call content. I used to love magazines.

There was no other medium that really at that time spoke to women.

The old joke is that Dolly taught you what an orgasm was.

Cleo taught you how to have one.

Cosmo taught you how to fake one.

And the Women's Weekly taught you how to knit one.

And then you died.

And so it was like we built our communities around these brands.

It was really powerful.

Part of the reason I left magazines was because I got tired of trying to explain to my bosses

that Armageddon was coming in the form of the internet.

And that we needed to move.

We needed to evolve.

And they were like, no, we're a magazine company.

What we do at Mamma Mia, I guess, is cover all of those things.

We've got 64 different podcasts.

We speak to eight million Australian women every month.

Our purpose is to make the world a better place for women and girls.

I'm just looking over at our producer.

Mia's starting to interview me.

Yeah.

She can't help it.

Mia Freeman.

Hello, Mark Boris.

Hello.

Welcome to Straight Talk.

Thanks for having me on Straight Talk.

I love the way you dress.

That's so cool.

Thank you.

You know, you get to a stage in your life that being cool is not what everyone else

thinks being as cool as you wear what the hell you feel like wearing and just be comfortable.

Exactly.

Be comfortable, but for me, it's also sparking joy.

So I realized I don't dress for men.

I don't dress for women either because I often just dress in a ridiculous way, but it just

gives me joy.

And if someone hates it, it honestly doesn't affect me in that it's not interesting to

me what they think.

It just sparks joy in me.

Do you know?

I don't know if you know this.

I don't know if you know this, but I know, and I'm hoping you still know, but I knew

your dad in the 90s.

Did you?

Yeah, yeah.

And I also knew, I knew Brian better.

Yeah.

But your dad and Brian Sherman were the Equity, known as Equity Link twins in those days.

Yeah, they were.

And they were one of the first group to ever sort of, one of the most prominent groups

and first groups to work, move into the funds management sort of sphere in Australia before

it was even known.

And I got to meet him through some people who were good mates of mine who were friends

of theirs.

Actually, they were a Jewish lawyer guy who I used to work for back in the 90s.

And that's where I first met your father.

Is your father still alive?

He is.

Well done.

Perfect.

How old is your dad now?

I see him every week.

He is, he turned 80 last year.

Wow.

Yeah.

And he's still great.

Well, please give him my regards if he remembers me at all.

But I was only a young fellow when I did meet him and I was with him in a law firm called

Simon Zabowski.

And he was a great guy.

He was a great guy.

That's where I met him in those days, back in those days.

Yeah, right.

Makes me feel really ancient when I'm sitting here in front of someone who's the daughter

of somebody I know or the son of somebody I know.

I feel the same way.

I had dinner with a girlfriend last night and her daughter is an entrepreneur.

You know, her daughter who I knew when she was a little kid is an entrepreneur of the

sunscreen band Ultraviolet.

And I now interview the children of people I used to know.

So I hear you.

It's totally weird.

It feels interesting, yeah.

Well, for me, it's weird.

Worst, though, is you're a mature woman with a grown, how old are your kids?

27, 18 and 16.

So you've got grown kids, pretty much grown.

Yeah, I've got a grandchild.

You have a, wow.

Yeah, I'm a grandma.

I am too.

This is my eccentric grandmother era.

I have a grand, I have three grandsons.

Isn't it the best?

It's so good.

Do you love it?

Yeah, I do.

I do.

I really love it.

Like, I'm actually on a weekend what's weird.

It's amazing.

Look, I'm just looking over at our producer.

Mia's starting to interview me.

Yeah.

She can't.

She can't help it.

But, and I'll tell you why I love it, is that on a weekend, when I'm thinking, well, what

am I going to do?

Like, I'm trying to, I try to chill on weekends, and I just sent a text to all my sons, and

I say, send me a photograph of the kids.

Yeah.

And they send me a video of the kids doing something stupid, or, you know, I bought them

all a punching ball the other day.

How old are their grandkids?

The two of them are one, two are one year old each.

There's two weeks between them.

And the other one, and George is six, seven, sorry.

And I was just like.

It's like watching their antics.

Yeah.

I've got more patience as a grandmother than I probably did as a mum.

Like, you can enjoy it more.

It's true what they say.

Well, also, you're not as exhausted.

Yeah.

Because, I mean, you ever think back, you've got three kids.

Yeah.

When you think back, I have four sons, when I think back, I thought, how the hell did

I do it?

Were you a hands-on dad?

Yeah.

Well, yes, with, in my second marriage with the three boys, I was, more so because my

wife at the time was always, she was ill for a lot, a lot of the time.

And unfortunately, so I had to do a lot.

When I say hands-on, did I go to everything, like school, parent, teacher, me?

No.

But I was always there.

And like in the morning, I had to get them ready for school.

And if there was someone ill, I would make sure that nanny or my grandmother came

over or the other grandmother came over.

And I was always sort of organizing crap.

Yeah.

But I was sort of pretty hands-on relative to the fact that I was trying to run a

business.

Yeah.

And I was running the wizard business in those days.

So I was sort of pretty full-on.

And I had a pretty full-on partner who was sort of very demanding of me.

So, and that's not James, that's Kerry.

So I had really, but I wonder where I got the energy from.

Like today, I know I couldn't do it.

I just.

Well, no, because you're older.

I'm older.

I just don't have that energy.

Or the patience, I think.

And do you think you get into a fog when you're a mom or a dad and you've got, and

you're sort of just, you're just doing.

Yeah.

You're not standing back thinking about it?

No.

I mean, you have no choice.

Whereas that's what's so lovely about being a grandparent is that you can actually enjoy

it because it's for shorter periods of time.

How old is your grandchild?

She's one and a half.

So even if she stays the night and she wakes up, I don't even care because it's one night.

Like, I don't care.

Yeah.

I can sleep in the next day.

Correct.

You're not thinking about all your stuff.

No, you're not like, oh, I've got to get to work tomorrow and put the load of washing

on and get dinner and, you know, it's like, you feel quite beleaguered.

Does she get into bed with you?

When your kid's a little.

Is she?

No, she sleeps in a little sleeping bag.

I'm very strict about, well, not strict, but I follow all the rules that my son puts

down for this is what she, this is her routine and I wouldn't dare cross that line.

So you have, you've got one son?

My eldest is 27.

My daughter is 18 and then I've got a younger son who's 16.

So you've got two sons and a daughter.

So still at school, yeah.

I've got a child, my husband's biggest fear is that we'd still have kids at school while

we had grandchildren and hey, it's come to pass, but I'm stoked because I wanted more

than three kids.

Yeah.

So I feel like, you know, I've got a little bit of that.

So at 18 months old or one and a half years, they're walking, they're actually that, that's

toddler level.

Yeah.

And that's when they're a little bit mischievous.

Yeah.

What do you do?

Their personalities come out.

But also like they're, what do you do?

Is your house like child proof?

We play with my jewelry.

We, I've got a room set up for her.

We, she loves reading books.

We go to the park, but I like, we're a family of homebodies.

I like hanging out at home and just mucking around.

Yeah.

But do you, child proof your house?

Like sort of you.

Yeah.

You're running around making sure, oh God, there's a corner on that table.

Yeah.

You have to buy all the.

You have to buy all the new stuff.

Like you have to buy a cot again.

You have to buy a pram again and a high chair and all that stuff I'd just completely forgotten

about.

And nappies and, you know, a lot of the stuff stayed the same, but there's, you know, a

few funky new inventions.

I like a funky new pram.

And are you one of those grandparents, I try to be, who tries to be constructive with the

kid, for example, relatively the way I was with my kids growing up.

I just happy for them to get up, eat their food and go back to sleep.

Yeah.

As opposed to now when George.

Is there, he's a seven year old.

I'm always trying to give him constructive things to do like Lego, let's make something.

Let's do something like, like I try to be like, um, more educational.

No, I just want to be fun.

You want to be fun.

Yes.

I just want to be fun.

And that's what, one of the things I love.

There's no pressure.

Like if she doesn't have all the food groups at my house.

Oh, well, like we just have fun.

I feel no pressure to tick all the boxes and do all the things.

I'm the opposite.

I'm the tiger granddad.

Are you?

Yeah.

That's weird.

I'm the tiger granddad.

I'm going, well, I got to get, he's got to be able to, you know, like bounce a basketball,

uh, hit the puncher pads.

Oh, no, I forget all that stuff.

Like I forget, like even with my third, I've sort of forgot that I had to teach him things

like how to tie shoelaces, how to answer the phone.

Like I sort of, cause there was such a big gap between my kids.

It was like, I've been a parent for so long and now I'm in a, I'm now being a grandparent.

So I kind of, I've never been.

I've never been very good.

I'm good at the life lessons, like the teaching about, you know, feminism and I love nothing

more than having, um, my kids trapped in the car with me so I can deliver a lecture.

Your kids are good.

About life.

What about grandkids?

Well, I don't talk to, she's too little to absorb my life lessons, but particularly I

love a car of teenage boys on the way to sport where I can just give them a little bit of

coaching about life and about women and about consent and about how to be a good guy.

That's interesting because.

Um.

And they usually try to get out of the car while it's still moving to get away from me.

Thanks Mrs. Proven.

Yeah.

Bye.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Okay.

Well, 16 year olds are pretty interesting age group.

15, 16 is a pretty interesting age group of boys these days.

I love 16 year old boys.

They're pretty aware.

They're so, oh, they're so funny.

My son's group of friends are just so funny and interesting and quirky and they're just

good kids.

They're just really interesting, good kids.

I love talking to.

You know, younger people, my daughter's friends as well.

But when they're that age, I mean, like, uh, you can get the boys who are not, not sulky,

but, um, it's not cool to talk to mom or be seen as talking to mom in front of my mates.

Yeah.

They've come out of that.

He's come out of that.

Luckily that, that always breaks my heart, that phase.

At least I was prepared for it because it happened with my eldest, but I find those

years between about 12 and about 16 really hard.

I really miss them because they're just, they don't even, you know, you touch them and they

literally flinch.

Yeah, totally.

Like what did you touch me for?

Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Yeah.

Ugh, ugh, ugh.

They recoil from you and that breaks my heart, but then they come back around this age.

Just talking about, um, because it's interesting you just said to me about, um, you know, you

might talk to me about life lessons, things that you've learned and experienced and things

that you're passionate about and, you know, and that is, you know, I don't want to say

women's rights, um, you know, feminism generally, but in a broader sense, um, and all those

things that go with it.

Yeah.

Um, and, uh, you know, the, the position of women in, in society, um, I, I actually read

most of my sons on my own, so it was me and, um, before sons, um, and then, uh, we had

a male dog as well.

And, uh, one of the things that I noticed that, um, when they all went out on their

own, they left home at 18, 19, 20, um, they'd had very little experience with females other

than my mother.

Um, and that was more a grandmother.

Did they go to boys' schools as well?

Yeah, they went to Cranbrook and the Scots.

And I think that's really, really challenging.

Yeah.

You know, I think.

I think that, um, a single sex education is, is, yeah, is, is problematic, particularly

if kids don't have siblings of the opposite sex at home.

I think it can, it can mean that, I mean, and I went to a girls' high school, but it

can mean that weekends can just be about hooking up.

Like you're so focused on the hookup, you almost don't have time to have girls as friends

or boys as friends, unless you're in a sort of a group, which I had growing up because

I, my best friend had a twin.

So we had this big group of girls and boys and my son has that as well.

They have a big group of, of girls and, and guys that are all mates.

But, um, yeah, I think that that's, it's so important to have friends of the opposite

sex.

Well, given that you're someone who's, you know, you operate in this environment largely,

um, what would you have said to someone like me, um, and during that period, because I

was, um, acutely unaware.

Right.

Of what might be the consequences of not having them exposed to enough women in their

life, influential women I'm talking about.

Yeah.

And they all relied on each other quite heavily because I was always flying overseas to work.

So, uh, we had a nanny there, but she was Japanese, couldn't speak hardly any English

and she would sort of take over when I, when I was away and the boys had sort of pretty

much run riot.

Um, what I mean by that, not in a bad way, but they own the house, they own the place,

um, because there's four of them and they range from, you know, I, you know, I, I, I,

19 down to nine and they're probably a bit overwhelming for the poor girl when I think

about it in hindsight, but I never used to think about that sort of stuff.

And, um, but I didn't really have an alternative.

I, I guess I could have sold them to a, send them to a, sold them, could have sold them

to, could have sent them to a, um, co-ed school, but I wasn't aware of those things.

You know, maybe I'm, I'm, maybe I'm the problem.

I, maybe I was just totally unaware of having proper balance for them.

I only become aware of it when they got older.

What would you say to someone like that?

Cause there must be other men in those.

Situations.

I just think they learn a lot by how the men in their life treat women and talk about women.

I think that that's, I think that you model that behavior, whether it's how the men in

their life treat their mother or, um, their grandmother or their aunts or their, you know,

a waitress or, you know, someone that works in their house or that works for them or their

teacher, you know.

It's, it's how you talk about women.

It's how you talk about women that, you know, how you talk about women that you don't know,

women that are in the news, women, you know, and, and I think they learn a lot about how

to be in the world just by osmosis.

It's not though, it's not, you know, for all of my life lessons in the car, it's not really

that it's the, it's the quantity exposure that they get because kids biggest role models are

always their parents and they have the most exposure to their parents, uh, in most cases.

So I think that it's about.

That interesting.

So probably what I should have been doing at that time is because I was very close to my mother and

my sister, I probably should have been exposing them.

Well, I did expose them a bit, but I should expose them.

I should have exposed them more to those things.

It's funny because I just never grew up aware of those things.

Maybe it's a generational thing too for my generation.

Um, you know, men were men, women, women, men went to work, you know, provided the women stay at

home, mind the kids.

Um, you know, if the husband and wife never sort of crossed paths because when he got home, she was

going to bed.

Yeah.

Well, cause she was too tired.

That was pretty normal in my, certainly when I grew up and I, and I got, I'm a firm believer

monkey see monkey do.

Exactly.

It doesn't matter what you get told.

You, you said by osmosis.

And as you said that I'm thinking, well, observation I observed, I did.

And my son's probably observed me.

I wasn't disrespectful to women, but I just had no women in my life.

I didn't even have a girlfriend.

Like I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to challenge them with that.

So I was just, dad went to work.

Dad came home and looked.

Uh, and you know, mucked around with the boys and told them to do the homework, go to bed.

And then dad would go on a work trip and come back a week later.

I don't know how you would have constructed that like without it.

You know, it's not like, let's go and be around some women.

Like, I don't know if you can sort of do that, but it's, you know, I think one of the toughest

things for boys and girls is seeing the opposite sex as the other.

And you know, one of the, I remember saying to my son, he really appreciated what we're on, um,

on the way to school.

One day he had like an exam for, he was in the middle of his exams and something had

happened in the U S I think it was the Supreme court Roe versus Wade or something.

And I was trying to explain that, um, the rights to reproductive rights, like the abort

abortion being legal is not just a woman's issue.

It's also a man's issue because if you accidentally get a girl pregnant, which you probably will

in your lifetime at some stage, guess what?

That is half of your problem.

And if she doesn't have access to abortion legally.

And I was giving this whole course and it's like, can I please just study for my French exam?

And I was like, okay, yeah, but it's really important.

So can I just, do you mind if I just take a little bit?

I, I don't know.

I mean, there's a lot of stuff written about you on Wikipedia, but I know half the stuff

from Wikipedia, but the greatest respect to Wikipedia is incorrect.

I know that my birthday is on there sometime in November and it's like my birthday was

in June.

So I, I, I, what I, what my team produced to me.

It's probably incorrect.

So can I go back?

Mia Freeman is a young kid.

Yeah.

Where'd you grow up?

I grew up in Sydney.

Brothers and sisters.

An older brother, seven years older.

Yeah.

And mom and dad.

Yeah.

Divorced, married.

No, married, still married.

Happily married.

Yeah.

And your dad.

My dad was, started his own business when I was probably in late primary school.

So it was like he had a business partner.

He'd worked in, you know, he'd been a sort of a stockbroker, went out on his own, entrepreneur.

It was very much the two families because it was, his business partner was his cousin's

husband and they kind of literally from the kitchen table, like I have very strong memories

of the two families sort of grew up together and it was, you know, we'd be putting things

in envelopes and sending them out the kids and it would be walking, you know, trying

to think of names for the business.

So we watched that happen.

I wasn't, you know, he was an immigrant from South Africa.

So his whole family came over as a political protest to apartheid in the 60s because that's

the only way you could protest apartheid is by leaving.

And they had a great life there.

His father was a doctor and his mother was an artist and, you know, white people had

great lives in South Africa during apartheid.

But they found it absolutely abhorrent and they left in protest.

And came to Australia with nothing and had to start again.

So I did not grow up in a house with money.

My mum, her father's a doctor, but, you know, very working class and middle class.

And she was Australian.

Yeah, Australian, you know, back to the convicts.

And so, yeah, I grew up in a house that was, you know, kind of typical 70s where the parents

were doing their own thing.

A parent was something you were, not something that you did.

You know, to kind of normal, regular childhood.

And my dad's business became really successful probably when I was in my late years of primary

school.

But it kind of wasn't really overnight.

And, yeah, so I always had entrepreneur in my world.

You saw it.

Yeah, I saw it.

I saw what it looked like.

But watching your dad starting a startup, doing a startup.

Yeah.

It was very much a startup.

With his business partner.

Before that word existed, yeah.

Yeah, it was very much a startup.

And this is the funds management business.

Yeah.

So that was pretty new.

I don't know if you know that.

Yeah.

But there was a lot of it going on in the US.

It got exported or imported from the US to Australia.

We didn't really have funds management, particularly, definitely in the 80s, there was a few people

talking about it.

It was nowhere near as prevalent as it was in the United States.

And then a few people like your dad.

And his business partner started to have a crack at these things, but it wasn't easy

to raise the money.

It wasn't easy to get people to-

No, they traveled a lot and they raised money in Australia, went overseas, got money to

be invested in Australia.

And I remember any kid whose parents run a business and grows up in that family, there

are really tough times and there are scary times and the stakes are high and there's

a lot of highs and lows.

Could you see that?

I mean, as a young girl, how old would you be?

Yeah, I remember the stock market crash.

That was terrifying.

In the 87?

Yeah.

And I was, what, 16 then.

And that was like shockwaves through the world, but I was not protected from that.

Like that was a potentially ruinous-

What happened?

I mean-

I can't remember.

What did you feel though-

Fear.

In the household?

Absolute terror.

Like, is this the end?

Is it all over?

Because the stock market crash was a big one.

It was a big deal.

Like, it was huge.

Massive.

And your dad's fund would have been investing in the stock market.

So, what in those days people do is, maybe I'm a high net worth person, I'll put in,

you know, maybe a million dollars into the fund.

And the objective was your dad would invest mine and all my other friends' money.

In those days, they would invest in the stock market.

They didn't really invest in startups and equity, private equity stuff in those days,

but they invest in the stock market.

Stock market crashes.

Do you have any sense of, as a teenager,

have any sense of the devastation, the anxiety that your father would have been experiencing?

Oh, massive.

I mean, my whole childhood was just anxiety.

Before I realized that I actually had anxiety, which is only sort of much later in my life,

I was an incredibly anxious child because there was also the threat of nuclear war

because it was the Cold War with Russia and America.

So, I lived, and then there was also AIDS.

Yeah, that's right.

So, that was the 80s.

So, the 80s was just the worst time.

It was the worst time for me to grow up because between the stock market crash, AIDS, and

the Cold War, we were a generation that was just terrified, constantly terrified.

Well, the AIDS made you terrified.

AIDS, oh, absolutely, because we became of age sexually when sex was connected with death.

And so, that was our introduction to sex, that it could kill you.

Yeah.

And the Simon Reynolds Grim Reaper ads.

Yeah.

Because everything was scary.

My memory of my childhood and adolescence was just terror, absolute terror.

How did you become aware of those things?

Because it's pretty unusual that, certainly in my household, at that stage, I had a teenage

son, close enough to a teenage son.

I would not have brought home the newspaper to him.

How is it that Mia Frubin was aware of that?

Did you, was it from TV?

I mean, the ads are on television, but was it, did you watch the news?

My parents were always very, you know, my mother's always been heavily into social justice

and used to take us on Palm Sunday anti-nuclear marches when all my friends at school were,

you know, going to tennis days and stuff.

We'd be in the city carrying placards, going to no nukes marches.

So I grew up with a real understanding of the world and social justice and politics.

And because my father had come from South Africa, all of those conversations would happen

around our table.

And I was fascinated always in the news and information and what we would now call content.

But I used to love magazines.

I would, you know, watch, magazines were my thing as a kid growing up because that was

the only women's media.

Any magazines I could get my hand on.

I mean, Clio was my go-to and favorite and, you know, gold star, but everything from,

of course, I started with Dolly and followed Lisa Wilkinson through her career and, but

I would buy.

Women's Weekly, I'd buy Women's Day, I would buy New Idea because there was no other medium

that really at that time spoke to women and that covered issues that were relevant to

women.

And I don't just mean like lipstick and sex, but like relationships, career, you know,

physical health, all of those kinds of things.

They would all be in women's magazines.

So that was when I really, and I was a really lonely kid.

So all I wanted to do was read magazines and it just drove me crazy that they would only

come out most of them once a month.

How do you mean lonely?

Like in that gap between you and your brother?

My brother was seven years older.

So that was a, that was a big gap.

And I, well, you know, now I know that I had ADHD, so I was like bored.

I needed a lot of stimulation and I didn't have it.

Like I didn't, you know, I didn't have anyone to play with on the weekends and my parents

were kind of busy with their own lives.

And so I would love, you know, I would just go and buy magazines.

I spent a lot of time with my dog.

And I would just go up to the shops and save all my pocket money to buy magazines and lollies.

I'm just sort of having an imagination of you sitting at home, sitting on your bed with

magazine, reading a magazine.

Yeah.

And cutting things out and sticking them on my wall and sticking them in my school diary

and on my school folders.

Oh, more than that.

No more than just reading.

Oh yeah.

You were participating with the magazine.

Yeah, as much as you could.

And it's funny you say that because one of the wonderful things about the internet and

that has been so revelatory for women is the two way.

Yeah.

The engagement.

Engage.

You couldn't really engage with magazines unless you wrote a letter to Dolly Doctor or

that was pretty much all you could do.

But, you know, I'd cut them out and I wanted to, I wanted to become them.

Yeah.

That's it.

Very interesting.

Yeah.

Like, because not too many people, and I often say this to people, like if you want to be

good at something, you, you've got to take the next step.

Just don't read about it.

Cut it out.

Yeah.

Even today, or if you're reading online, it's a bit different, but maybe you've photoshopped

it and you put it in record, record, record it somewhere, which is.

Well, anyone can make content now.

But you've got to get the content and you've got to be part of it.

You've got to be participatory as opposed to just being an observer, just reading, oh,

okay, the next thing.

Because then it becomes part of your brain's DNA.

You really get it inside your head.

And Dolly Magazine and Clio, I remember because my, my girlfriend at the time, who became

my wife, she used to get all the magazines and she used to always make me do those quizzes.

The quizzes and stuff.

Yeah.

The relationship quizzes.

And that was interactive.

Yeah.

It suited.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it was like in a, in a, in a media that didn't speak to women or care about women

and a culture that kind of didn't really rate women and it was very focused on men.

And women's magazines were where we, we built our communities around these brands.

And, you know, the, the old joke is that Dolly taught you what an orgasm was.

Clio taught you how to have one.

Cosmo taught you how to fake one.

And the Women's Weekly taught you how to knit one.

And then you died.

And so it was like we built our communities around these brands and we moved from brand

to brand as we got older and our interests in our life stage changed.

And it was really powerful, which is why it's just such a travesty and yet an opportunity

for me that, that, um, you know, when I went on to work for those magazines and edit some

of them, that company didn't understand that what they had were incredible brands.

They had the most amazing collateral in those brands that they just pissed into the wind.

and it's so sad that there's no Clio, there's no Dolly,

you know, even brands like the Bulletin.

There was these incredible brands that meant so much

and that should have become these iconic digital brands

across different platforms and they were just, you know,

part of the reason I left magazines was because I got tired

of trying to explain to my bosses that Armageddon was coming

in the form of the internet and that we needed to move,

we needed to evolve and they were like, no,

we're a magazine company, the internet's a fad.

We're a print company and magazines are a fad and anything

that we put on our website for the magazines is just

to get people to buy the magazine and we don't want to, you know,

if we put content online then they won't buy the magazine

and that's our business model.

Yeah, you want to bastardise the magazine.

Yeah, they thought it was going to be killing the golden goose

and in fact it killed the golden goose by not seeing

what was going on.

What was happening under their nose.

Before we move past that, what was your first introduction

to working in magazines?

Doing work experience at Clio.

And who did you work under?

Lisa Wilkinson.

Wow.

And Deborah Thomas, yeah.

Yeah, Deb.

I mean, iconic.

How's Deb going?

Amazing.

I had dinner with them both last night and some of my Clio friends.

So that was the most incredible education that I could have got.

Like to work at the knee of those women and to be in that building

in Park Street.

I mean, it was, you know, during that time of when the Packers owned it

and it was Nene King and it was, it wasn't, it wasn't Ida Buttrose,

but it was like Lisa and Pat Ingram and, you know, absolute icons.

And Richard Walsh and then Nick Chan and even later, John Alexander, like to.

J.A.

But yeah, J.A.

To be around those people was an absolute privilege and like that was my university

because I'd dropped out of university, almost, to make a living.

And that was my university.

How did you score the job?

I mean, how did you get that job?

I just wrote a letter.

To who?

And it was like, to Lisa.

And to just like, you know, can I please?

Can I love Maggie?

It wasn't a very original letter.

And, you know, she came and said, I knew someone else who'd been, a guy actually,

who'd been doing work experience like a day a week.

And that was my dream.

And, you know, I think I sort of used his name to get in the door.

And, you know, in my naivety, I thought, well, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

And, you know, in my naivety, I thought Lisa would offer me a job, but like I was a 19-year-old,

18-year-old.

I had no experience.

Nothing.

And she said, I remember exactly what she said in that conversation.

She said, because she was no doubt used to a lot of people going on magazines.

It's glamorous.

I didn't want to go to the photo shoots.

I wanted, like, she was my hero, not the models I used to be.

And I didn't want to go to the photo shoots.

I wanted her to be the model.

Um, and she said, I remember exactly what she said in that conversation.

She said, um, cause she was no doubt used to a lot of people going on magazines.

It's glamorous.

I didn't want to go to the photo shoots.

I wanted, like, she was my hero, not the models on the cover.

It was Lisa.

I wanted to be in the office.

I wanted to, with the disgusting carpet that was masking tape down and the shit falling

from the ceiling and the little rabbit Warren, you know, Kerry didn't get rich by spending

money on his offices.

Um, but that's where I wanted to be learning at the knee of those incredible women.

And that's where I spent the next pretty much 15 years of my career.

It's pretty full on though, as an 19 year old thinking that way.

Um, you know, especially as opposed to playing the, the ball, the magazine, you played the

man, the woman in this case, you played the player.

So you actually wanted to be with Lisa Wilkins.

And what did she, what did she, what did she represent you?

Like, uh, and how'd you know?

Well, Lisa was as important a person potentially into the characteristics, um, as you did know

about, like most people, was she the editor of.

She'd been the youngest ever editor in Australia.

How'd you know about that?

21.

Well, cause I'd read Dolly as a eight year old or nine year old, whatever.

And my favorite thing was Lisa's, um, editor's letter at the front of the magazine.

And it's so funny that editor's letters ended up becoming, you know, these airbrushed glamor

shops.

But Lisa was always very relatable.

She had this long hair and she had like glasses and she looked like a regular woman girl.

Like she was my idol.

Absolutely.

And then meeting her and just learning so much from her over the time that I was there

before she, you know, left and had a baby and went on maternity leave.

And I can't remember if she came back before she had a second child, but, you know, sitting

with her and, and Debra.

And.

I think the most important thing Lisa ever taught me was something that's a core value

at Mamma Mia now, which is walking her shoes.

And she didn't use those exact words, but she always said, look, we're making this magazine

not for ourselves, not to impress our peers or other people at other magazines or our

friends.

We're making it for our readers.

And so every photo shoot that you're on, every cover line you write, every story you pitch,

don't think about what you want to put out to the audience.

Think about what it looks like.

Think about what it looks like from their point of view.

And that has been something I've never forgotten.

And that has informed every career decision I've ever made.

And every content decision I've ever made is walking her shoes.

That's funny because that's what Kerry used to say to me.

He used to say, I couldn't give a damn what you think borrowers want.

I want you to work at what they want.

Yeah.

And that's what you talk to them about.

Yeah.

And that's the only reason we're in business.

A lot of people make, make content for themselves.

Or to impress other people.

And, and that's one thing to do, but that's never been interesting to me.

The way I've always edited, the way I've always thought about content is not through the eyes

of me to them, but from, through their eyes, what they can see, what they can hear.

And who's your consumer in other words.

Yeah.

Who's your consumer and always be the eyes and ears of your consumer.

That's, that's, and how would you find out what your, the, your consumer wanted?

I mean, I mean, you're a survey of your.

You're a, you're an N of one, you know, just one in the whole algorithm.

So you, it's good to look at yourself and what I think I would like to see as a, as a consumer.

But how do you find out what your consumers wanted?

I mean, did, would you, let's just elevate you now from the 19 year old who just started and you became the editor.

You became the editor of which magazine?

Cosmo.

Um, Cosmo.

Yeah.

Um, you, you became the editor of Cosmo.

How would you say, what would you say to your team in terms of finding out at that point, what your audience wants?

Was it survey based?

Um, surveys.

It's always unreliable.

So as market research, because you'll often, you know, those, those market researchers back in the magazine days, people would say like numbers don't lie.

So people would say, oh, well you should have more interesting people on the cover.

Like, you know, I remember someone saying to me in the nineties, you should have like Natasha Stott Despoja on the cover.

She was the head of the Democrat party back then.

And it's like, oh, you should have this one on the cover or that one on the cover.

But the covers that sold were very different.

So what people say they want and what they actually want, the numbers don't lie.

And same with digital even more so now, but in terms of how, before we had this intense feedback loop that digital media gives you, where you are not short of anyone's opinion in real time and the analytics that you have can literally show you, um, what works and what doesn't work, um, back then I've always had this real split in me because I'm such a consumer.

I'm such a consumer of women's media.

I'm always able to split between me or the creator and me or the consumer.

And I'm always just able to flip.

I don't even, I can't even explain it.

But sometimes when I'm talking to people, I'll say, I don't understand that headline.

I'm really confused by what, and they're like, but you, you know what that headline, and I don't mean me, Mia, I mean me, I'll go, I'll slip into first person as the voice of the audience.

You get into their shoes.

Yeah.

Walking in her shoes and someone who comes to it without assumed knowledge, without having read the whole article, she's just reading the headline.

That doesn't make sense.

That headline only makes sense if you've read the whole article and I'm just able to flip.

I can't explain how.

I'm just always able to flip and put myself in the shoes of, of, of other women.

Do you think it's fair to say that because I've, I've noted this sometimes, um, that when experts on a topic have conversations.

They're generally speaking, when they're talking to an audience, having a conversation with themselves about what they know, as opposed to having a conversation with the audience about what the audience is actually out there to find out about them, you know, like I, you know, we all can do it.

Um, we, we tend to, and I know what happens to me when it comes to interest rates.

I forget that I've got an audience that doesn't know maybe anything about interest rates and, um, just wants me to break it down for them in a certain way.

But I, sometimes I, I slip into the same mistake all the time, is I start having a conversation with myself, with Mark.

Yeah.

And it's Mark talking to Mark.

And, uh, we're, in your case, you've got experts who know what the topic is and they, therefore they put the headline up that reads well to themselves.

Yeah, exactly.

It's a bit like writing a, a speech and then getting up and speaking what you wrote.

And it sounds completely, it sounds really dull relative to what you thought you wrote.

You've always got to be clean skin.

Like, you know, if I'm thinking about the first thing I asked you when we sat down was just tell me a bit about your audience.

Cause I'm thinking about what's going to be interesting to your audience.

Cause I will, I'll give different answers.

Than if I was doing a podcast about fashion or a podcast pitch to women in business or a podcast pitch to, um, uh, you know, news or content creators.

And it's not that the answers aren't authentic, but it's like, okay, I need to thin slice and package up the most interesting thing for this audience in a way that's most interesting to them.

Not what do I want to talk about today?

Cause that's a whole other thing.

Yeah.

We're not sitting down to have a cup of coffee.

We're not here to hear what I want to talk about today.

Yeah.

Or me.

Or me for that matter.

And by the way, that's part of the skill of podcasting, isn't it?

Like, I mean, it's about my audience doesn't really give a damn what I think anyway.

They're more interested in hearing what Mia Freedman's got to say.

I don't know.

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I think podcasting is different.

I think that, you know, and you look at all you have to do.

You always look at the U.S. election.

I think the difference between podcasting and traditional interviewing on news media, like, say, 7.30 or 60 Minutes.

A three-minute clip.

Yeah, it's that.

And it's also, that's about, I get you.

Whereas a podcast is about getting to know you.

Yeah.

And that's why Donald Trump went to Austin and sat down for Joe Rogan for three hours.

And that was a really smart use of his time.

And the other biggest cut through.

Was Kamala Harris's interview with Alex Cooper from Call Her Daddy, which she paid for Alex to come to her, but still did it in Alex's format.

So, you know, it's interesting.

You look at, we've just seen the first podcast election and we've got our election in Australia next year.

And it will be really interesting to see what happens because at the last election, I remember so clearly, you know, we're the biggest women's media company in the world, in Australia.

We speak to.

We have the biggest podcast network in the world.

We speak to 8 million Australian women every month.

Anthony Albanese, straight away.

Yes, I'll come talk to you.

I'll sit down, do no filter.

Scott Morrison wouldn't have a bar of us, would not do it.

And I remember, it's not like he wasn't here because he came and talked to you.

He did, twice.

And I remember that day.

I'm like, he's literally up the road because we are 100 meters down the road, our office.

And he wouldn't come to Mamma Mia.

He didn't ask?

He refused.

Oh, we asked him for months.

We asked.

That's funny.

We said, it's not a gotcha.

We just want to sit down.

Anthony Albanese's come on no filter.

We want to give you the same opportunity.

I mean, you know, I'm not Lee Sayles.

I'm not going to give him a grilling.

It was just an open invitation with no expectations.

He probably should talk to Lee Sayles too, to be frank with you.

And he did.

Of course he did.

But he should.

But I'm not saying it's an instead of.

Yeah, yeah.

But the fact that he was always, and Tony Abbott was the same.

I've interviewed every Australian prime minister since I've, you know, over the last 15 years,

except for Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison.

Who would not sit down with me.

And it's like, why?

Why would you?

And it's not about me.

Anyone at Mamma Mia.

They would not engage with Mamma Mia.

They gave interviews to all kinds of people.

You twice.

But they would not give an interview to the biggest women's media company in Australia.

What does that say?

You know, we're talking earlier about attitudes to women.

What does that say about their understanding of 50% of their electorate?

51%.

Of their electorate, actually.

Their disdain for and their understanding of the influence that women have.

Like, it's almost like these men have such old-fashioned ideas about women.

It's like, oh, they'll just vote the way their husband tells them.

Like, I don't know what they were thinking, but it didn't go well for either of them.

That's sort of the assumption anyone could make.

Whether they think that way or not, it could be.

In 2020, in this century?

Yeah.

Who could make the assumption that women will just vote?

They'll just vote the way their men tell them to.

Well, it's interesting because has Peter Dutton reached out to you?

No, but we've reached out to him.

So we've opened up an invitation for, you know, we know that the election's going to be sometime in the next nine months.

The invitation's there for Peter Dutton to come on Mamma Mia Out Loud, which is our flagship show.

And it's the third biggest podcast in Australia of any kind.

And, of course, Anthony Albanese.

Now, I hope, like, it would be madness for him not to.

We've seen what happened in America.

Yeah.

I think that was a really missed opportunity.

I'm not saying it would have moved the election, but I just think that idea of is really old

fashioned.

Scott will only talk to you and Abbott will only talk to you because you're a man.

Like, we won't talk to it.

It's like, come on.

But those days are over.

It's really interesting you should make that point because Dutton actually is coming on

our show.

Yeah.

And they reach out to us, but-

Of course.

And I'll be saying-

So that's the thing.

They'll reach out to you, but it won't occur to them, even though women are responsible

for, I think it's 80% of purchasing decisions in Australia.

This is why smart advertisers advertise to women, because this idea that women, and women

aren't just responsible for like buying the breakfast cereal and the washing powder, finance,

investment, insurance, banking, cars, real estate.

Women are incredibly influential, if not entirely responsible for making those decisions.

I know that's our experience in the lending business.

The purchasing power of women is extraordinary.

100%.

The voting power of women is extraordinary.

And the thing about women is that women are kind of programmed to be viral.

Like the word of mouth and the amplification of your message, when you put it in the mouths

of women, or you can get women to engage with you.

But the reality is that what you do is untold.

Well look at this camera.

Men don't amplify.

Look at this camera.

What would you say to Peter Dutton?

Because I'm going to show him this clip when he comes on the show.

What would you say to Peter?

In this camera.

I'm not going to look down the camera because to be honest, I think Peter Dutton needs women

more than women need Peter Dutton.

I think it's his-

That's a good point.

I think it's his game to lose in that sense, in winning the hearts and minds of women.

Does he just need to win them, or does he just need to introduce himself at least?

Yeah.

And, I mean, it used to be, oh, they'd go and do an interview

with the Women's Weekly, which Scott Morrison did last election campaign

and he did 60 Minutes and he played his ukulele.

But that part of the audience is absolutely dwindling.

Like if you want to reach women over the age of 18 up to about 55,

you know, Mamma Mia is where they are.

We've got 64 different podcasts.

We've got, you know, between our social, our written content,

this idea that women are somehow a niche is just kind of, well, it is laughable.

Well, given the voting in this country is compulsory to it,

it just doesn't make sense mathematically.

I mean, it's funny you should say that about Morrison

because I've invited Albo on this show and Jim Chalmers so many times.

And they won't come.

They won't come on my show, which is interesting.

I wonder why.

He goes,

I don't know if it's, in my case, I don't think it's necessarily my audience

and I don't think it's necessarily men versus women or their views.

I think it's more about what they think my politics is

because I've had Scott Morrison on.

And I'm not going to, I'm not here to pull Albo's pants in.

I just want to talk to him about his story.

Of course.

That's what my show's about.

Of course.

And that's the thing.

It's getting to, it's not a gotcha.

I don't get in to bring anyone a nut.

I think that political leaders and their advisors have not got that message,

that podcasts aren't a hostile environment.

I mean, I'm not Lee Sayles.

You're not Kerry O'Brien.

Like, if only I bow down to those people, but that's not what a podcast is.

It's just not.

And it actually is the best way for someone to introduce themselves

and to, yeah, tell people who they are.

And it's like, you know, I wouldn't be interested.

I'm not the best person, and Alice Cooper said this

when she interviewed Kamala, to sit down and talk about fracking

and talk about, you know, I'm not the best person.

I'm not the best person.

the economy necessarily, but she spoke to her about reproductive rights

and about abortion because that is such a critical issue for women.

As it turned out, it wasn't such a critical issue when it came to voting.

But there's just not a lot of downside.

There's not a lot of downside because I think what people expect now,

not just from politicians but from public figures,

is not just a soundbite, you know.

It's to understand who.

are they really because if there's one thing people always say about donald trump you know

who he is yeah you know what you're going to get you know what you're going to get and whether you

think what you get is awful or spectacular you know and and going into this election in the u.s

i think it was 85 percent of people said they will not have their mind changed about donald trump

no matter what they thought about him good or bad their mind was made up and nothing that could be

said or done to change their mind and i think that's really interesting do you do you think

that um in terms of trump anyway do you think his propensity that i just don't care what people

think i'll go on any bot any podcast do you think it's his sort of but he didn't because he didn't

go on alex cooper so he only what goes on friendly he only goes on friendlies and i understand like

politicians go on friendlies but rogan didn't want to do rogan rogan was necessarily oh rogan's

very friendly do you think it's very friendly and i think he would have been

fine to kamala i don't think he would have been awful but to donald trump he was very friendly like

very friendly as opposed to not being unfriendly well as opposed to like calling him out on his

bullshit like he's not going to do that because that's just not the kind of podcast that he has

you know like you can go on to rogan and pretty much talk about yourself for three hours and he'll

just kind of let you yeah yeah which is sort of what yeah both of us do

yeah for sure exactly we're not interested in having someone there to tell them what we think

that's the nature of podcast yeah yeah that's how podcasts work and that's why

podcasts are indexed so much higher for women than they do for men and that's why

for us at mama mia so much of our business is built on audio and on on our podcast network

can i go back to mama me then just yeah kicked off early 2000s um 2000s 2008 actually yeah

sorry

started as a blog yeah just me blogs is a thing yeah it was just someone writing on the internet

really and it wasn't a personal blog so it was always going to be about um you know just what

i wanted to write about really what i thought might be interesting to people um because back

in that time there were women's women's websites were like they were very net specific they were

about cooking or they're about gossip or they're about fashion or they're about parenting and i was

interested in all of those things but i was also interested in news and pop culture and every

other woman i know was not just interested in one of those things so it made sense to me to have a

blog and then a website and now media company that covers all of those things because this idea of

women's issues it's very different looking at the world through a female lens versus women's issues

all issues are women's issues but um what we do at mama mia i guess is look at it through a female

lens because most of the media tends to look at it through a male lens just by virtue of the fact

in fact pretty much all media companies are run by men um so i just saw you know a gap in the market

and then i established that there was a market in that gap and then i'd been growing an audience but

i was a one woman operator and i was completely exhausted and my husband had sold his business

he'd been in the liquor industry and he was looking for something to invest his time in

and um he'd sold his his company and so he came on board as a co-founder

after about 18 months and he said let's try and monetize this in the next 12 months or because i

hadn't earned a cent in two years um or it's time to you know it's going to be time to get another

job because we've got a mortgage to pay and so he came on board and and we did we monetized it

we were profitable i think in that first year which was not as as impressive as it sounds

because it was just him and me and we weren't earning any money there was nowhere else to pay

so we were profitable

um but then we just slowly moved into a little tiny office and slowly started hiring people and

of course nobody wanted to really come and do this thing the internet was still a bit untested and

um yeah we just we just grew from there and now we've got about 150 people and

yeah we're we're sort of a pretty big we're not a not a small business anymore when two people

husband and wife sitting there um at the coffee table or whatever the kitchen table

and uh i often wonder about um let's say at that stage your husband wasn't involved and you were

doing your blogs i often wonder is is is a blog for some people therapy that's a really interesting

it was for some people i think what was amazing about um the rise of blogging particularly um the

parenting bloggers of around that time which i never was but i was very influenced by them it

was this very flourishing way of women

to communicate to other women in a way where there was no gatekeeper so there wasn't no edit

no edit and there was no one saying well that's interesting to people or that's not interesting

to people it and there was no um oh well is that going to be interesting to enough people to be

able to monetize it through advertising it was just women expressing how they felt about things

and it was an amazing time um it was fairly short-lived but it was an amazing time and for me

i wasn't interested in writing

personally particularly but i was interested in being the one i'd been an editor for so long and

then a editor-in-chief with lots of magazines under me at acp and i'd been sort of managing

people and teaching other people and editing other people for so long i've spent a lot of

my career climbing up the ladder because i'm very ambitious but then realizing i don't really like

it up there and climbing back down and wanting to get back to the cold face without

anyone between me

in an audience and just wanting to communicate directly and that's what i love and ironically i'm

in the process of that at the moment again de-escalating coming back to the cold face

where i can just create directly for an audience and what what are the signs that um you and your

husband um saw that either encouraged him or you or both yeah to think hang on um i'm gonna he's

gonna take on the um co-founder role yeah and we're gonna monetize this what did you say

exactly what it was

no um we there were probably about 10 000 or more people coming every day to read what i was writing

i was doing about six posts a day on my own per day per day wow i was there were thousands of

comments i was moderating every single comment like i had no one to work for me it was literally

me walking around with my laptop in my house um and then i had another baby during that time but

the reason that he realized there was something there is because i kept getting approached

by private equity who wanted to start things and get me to run them for them

and he would come with me yeah there was a some there was a big thing at the time called daily

candy out of the u.s which was a daily email that would like do a roundup of the best kind of deals

and fashion things and various things and so everyone wanted to to get into this women's

digital space and so i'd get jace to come to these meetings with me and jace being your husband jason

levine being my husband and and you know we went to a couple and it was like why on earth would we

go and work for these clans and i was like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't

how to do this let's just we're doing it like so that that's where he was like well if they can

see something in it and he was starting at harvard at the time and he um used mama mia as because he

didn't have his business he just sold his business before he'd started this three-year harvard course

and he used mama mia as a as a model because they had to sort of in their business yeah case not a

case study but they had to plug in their own businesses to these things they were learning

and he used mama mia at the

Natalie I'd um i'd maybe i'd think bout instagram shite to it then no problem we weren't going on a

day out but we didn't but we worked together and then jace's then i think those conversations and jace if we don't

and it just made him see the potential there and I was getting all these approaches but I

didn't have the bandwidth or the skills to be honest to monetize any any of the approaches

I was getting so for a while um you know he was managing me and people would get me to come and

you know they wanted me to to be the brand ambassador for their whatever and he would

do those deals and then he's like there's there's there's a business here potentially

and he could see that I was completely burning out and I didn't have a capacity to monetize it

myself and I also didn't I didn't have a business plan I didn't know how to do a business plan

he was like what's what's your exit you you're not and I'm like I don't know Rupert Murdoch will

come along and buy me and he's like buy what it's you and your laptop there's nothing to buy

and I was like I couldn't I couldn't see that because I was just so caught up in it and he was

the one that's always had the vision I've always been really good at this and he's always been the

one that can see over the top and he's always been the one that can see over the top and he's always

been the one that can see over the horizon and been like no mama mia needs to be a website that

you edit and I'm like oh no that'll never work or he's like mama mia needs to and I'm like oh no

that'll never work and then he's right and he's right and he's right so we've been a really good

combination whereas he's very much steered the business um and the financial side of it and

everything other than the content and I've steered the content and it's worked you know really well

for 17 years and one of the most dangerous times for any startup and I'm much more suited

to startup culture I've realized um but he always had much bigger ambitions and

the most dangerous time for a business we learned was we knew was going from startup to scale up

because culturally it's a big shift the people that you hire as generalists you then move to

needing specialists it's a big risk moving up and he managed us through that um he was an out

he's been an outstanding CEO managing through all of those rocky waters and through COVID and

through we tried to you know not everything we've done has worked we tried to expand into the US

that didn't work so we closed that down and decided to really focus here um but probably

the biggest thing for us was when Facebook told everybody to pivot to video they told publishers

to pivot to video and everybody sacked their writers invested all this money started making

video pivoted and then Facebook went oh yeah nah yeah nah and

that was sort of the beginning of the end for the buzz feeds the vices and they just ended up

getting more and more investment more and more needing more and more um doing bigger and bigger

cap raises to fund this bigger and bigger expansion and because we've never done that

we've always been in control of our own destiny and that's a decision that Jason made because

he knew that you know and I would say well how come they've got all this cap raising and we don't

and he's like it means that we can make the best decisions

for our business and we can make the best decisions for our business and we can make the

best decisions for our business so when everyone pivoted to video we actually pivoted to audio

and that was before most people knew what a podcast was and that ended up being a really

really good decision for us so but just on the co-founder thing because often people say to me

do I need a co-founder or some people come to me and say I need a co-founder um because they

heard someone else say that you need a co-founder well I needed a co-founder well is it better to

say though Mia that um I'm not a co-founder I'm not a co-founder I'm not a co-founder I'm not a

I'm really good at this but I'm not so good at those things those things are important in my

business yeah in the business yeah um therefore I'll find a co-founder who can do those things

because you know my old man is my dad used to say just always put up on a whiteboard what you're

good at yeah and what but equally what you're honest what you're crap at yeah oh 100% and uh

you know and I often say my various businesses and I've always had my brother involved my younger

brother involved who's a lawyer I say I cut he sews um and you know nice and if because he's he's

just stitching things up making it really nice and neat and tidy and relevant etc not in terms

of content but just in terms of structure finances every car needs a break in an accelerator you

totally there you go yeah so did you did you Mia uh sort of recognize that your husband had those

qualities yes I knew that I couldn't do because I was just all I knew I was really really good at

this one thing but I was

not there was this whole other thing that not only was I not good at wasn't interested in

becoming good at it yeah I didn't enjoy it it wasn't a good use of my time doing this thing

that I didn't understand or wasn't good at and so for me not only did Jase have skills that I

didn't have in terms of business and finance but he also had a different mindset because

um I have a high um I have a low boredom threshold and a high appetite for risk

he is more cautious and I think that has been in a in a business if you just have un un um harnessed

ambition or unharnessed risk appetite that's really dangerous especially if both of you

risky yeah you can't and so I think you know the best partnerships and I've always said you know I

ran this whole um course part of the business for many years called lady startup which is about

start businesses and about the co-founder thing I would always say exactly what you've said which

is either partner with someone who has different strengths to you or hire if you can afford to

and the problem is that most people their co-founders will be like a friend or a sister

or something and I had you know they'll say oh this is my co-founder we're really different like

I'm this and she and it's like your differences are like this yeah you need differences that are

like this like whether you're really you know you look at some of the most successful partnerships

um in Australia and you're like oh I'm going to start a business and I'm going to start a business

in business Nikki and Simone Zimmerman yeah um you know there's as in the faith a clothing

brand Zimmerman sisters yeah Nikki creative Nicole um is I think a lawyer by trade or maybe

an accountant and so you know they're very clear about who does what and I think that that's been

that's been the key for me and Jason there's no way I could have done this without him and

you know he would have done something else without me but it wouldn't have been this

so can I could is it an important

point here though and I've seen this happen in people with people especially um husband and

wife or boyfriend girlfriend or brother and sister etc or brothers and sisters

if you have somebody like you say with your skills and things you like doing

and with a high appetite for risk you say and this is sort of what you're explaining to me you say

look I want to do this and he will come back and he'll say well wait a minute let's just check this

out and do a bit of analysis on it blah blah measure twice cut once but do you ever get to

where you say well hang on don't you believe in me you're like this is what I believe in do you ever

get to the point say I just want you to believe in me yeah and he's going to say well hang on I do

believe in you but my role is correct now how do you deal with that little it's a small conflict

there but what would happen counseling like yes um it was it's really interesting we've come

to really like I bristle at being held back and he bristles at me running

headlong into something passionately but what we've learned over the years is that is to trust

each other like it's been proven time and time again that my instincts when I want to run hard

at something I can't often explain like with podcasts there was no business model I just knew

that it was something we had to do and I remember getting up in a leadership team meeting

and explaining podcasts and they all kind of like laughed at me and whatever and I'm like no guys

like take this and it's like oh Mia like we've got our

business plan we can't we do it this is our strategy we can't and I'm like and so I'll just

go off and do it on my own it's like lady startup I just Jace walked past my office one day and I was

on the floor and I was cutting things up or maybe it was the very peri summit and I was whatever and

he's like oh babe you know what are you doing what's and I said and he go what's the business

plan I'm like I'm not sure like what what's the revenue attached to it and I'm like I'm not sure

but I'm sure I'll find it and I always have so whether it's been podcasts the very peri summit

that I did or the lady startup I'm like I'm not sure but I'm sure I'll find it and I always have

that course very peri as in very menopause peri menopause yeah so they've all been like

multi-million dollar become multi-million dollar parts of our business but they didn't start off

going how can we make a lot of money it's been I've gone what walking in her shoes what do women

want okay and then we find a way to make it financially viable to actually do it because

we're not a charity we're a corp we're a purpose-driven business and our purpose is to

make the world a better place for women and girls so I'm always looking at what can I make that

fulfills that purpose um so yeah that's kind of how it works so can you just list out I know you

got like 50 odd podcasts or something like that in your in your group yeah and I don't want you

to list every one of those out but I won't what are the I would imagine you can't but could you

just explain your model the mama mia model is it sort of an umbrella model

that sort of sits lots of other podcasters sit inside your model no we are pure we're a pure

podcast network so we're all owned and operated all and operated so so you go and find the talent

to do a particular podcast theme or how's it yeah so we will you know our first podcast was

mama mia out loud which is about um sort of what women are talking about and that's a daily it's

now daily show it started as a weekly show um so we built that first and then I started doing

an interview podcast called no filter and then we went okay we want it

to do a parenting podcast so we found two people and um we did a weekly parenting podcast to to

people to run the podcast yeah to host the podcast let's call it the talent yep yep talent and then

you have advertisers who are like oh we want to advertise to parents yeah so we'll advertise on

that podcast or we'll sponsor that whole show and then we're like well what else do women want

the news is pretty hectic there's a lot of assumed knowledge in the news how about a quick daily

news podcast and then we're like well what else do women want the news is pretty hectic

so that's when we started the quickie which is now twice daily news podcast then we did the spill

which is a once daily entertainment podcast and you're finding talent for these shows every time

yeah that among our writers among our editors um in-house talent um a lot of the time now we also

work with external talent but they're our shows um we create them we're about to launch a show

called diary of a birth where people tell their birth stories we're launching a story about once

upon a time once upon a divorce about i love it

stories about divorce um you know we have podcasts about true crime we have podcasts about

uh comedy pop culture different aspects of pop culture um you know all that we've done sport

before all that different aspects of women's lives and areas of interest so some the umbrella

business sort of yeah is really like a you're a big publisher one big publisher we're a media

company you're a media company correct so you and underneath it you own all the various aspects

yeah it's not i mean it's not something you can buy anything you have the mission to be able to

find a way to sell it to people yeah quite frankly it's not that it's not that i've never been there

but i think you know if you want to open up your mind and go down to like the old you know maybe

it's a bit like news corp you know you might back when it was you know there's not only the daily

telegraph and there's a whole lot of magazines that might sit under there and there might be a

bit of tv a bit of yeah so some people say are you a branded house or a house of brands we're

actually both yeah so we're a branded house in terms of mamma mia but we're also a house of

brands in terms of we've got the cancelled podcast we've got the quickie podcast we've got mamma mia

out loud podcast so we've got all these different brands we've got a whole beauty podcast we've got a

a fashion podcast, we've got a midlife podcast, we've got a mental health podcast, a wellness

podcast. So we've got all these different, you know, categories and each of them have their

own ecosystem. So around our wellness podcast, for example, there's a newsletter, there is a,

you know, it might be a Facebook group, there might be written content on our website,

there will be social accounts, so there'll be TikToks, there'll be Instagram. So, you know,

there are these ecosystems that are built around these brands as well as the podcasts themselves.

Well, given that you built that, how do you keep excited? I mean, what's exciting coming up? What

are you thinking about? What's going on? Yeah. So at the moment, I'm super excited about-

You look it. I do.

No, seriously, you look really excited. Yeah, you do. I got the vibe when you walked in.

Yeah. Do you know why? Because I'm extracting myself from management. After 17 years,

we've finally made some big hires. We've hired a CEO this year for the first time. We've hired

a chief content officer for the first time.

Which is, yeah, they were your roles, sort of.

Yeah, exactly. Well, Jason was CEO and I was chief content officer, essentially. And we've

hired to replace ourselves. And we've sort of got this whole big management team now,

senior leadership team. You know, we've got a chief operating and product officer. We've got

CFO. We've got all these people, head of content. And I'm climbing back down the ladder

and I'm back to making content.

So I've got an audio documentary that I'm making. I'm still doing Mamma Mia out loud.

Yeah, I'm really excited because the running the business part,

I'm very tired. Like that's been 17 years of Mamma Mia. And before that,

I was in management for another 15 years. And that's a long time.

You were both a podcaster and in the business of podcasting.

Yeah. So I run three hats. I have three hats in the business. I'm a co-founder.

And co-owner. I am a manager and I am talent. I'm a creative and a content creator. And that's

what I want to be. I mean, of course, I'm a co-founder and that stays and a co-owner,

but I want to be a creator. I want to get back to actually making stuff.

How important is for someone like yourself, I mean, we're going to have to draw to a close

moment because our audiences don't last more than 45 minutes. Not because you, it's just me.

I've trained them that way.

45 minutes is quite a long time.

It is a long time.

Yeah.

I've never experienced this, but how important is it for someone like you to be independently

successful as a woman in the family, like your parents' family and your own sibling

and yourself and your mom and dad? How important is it for you to be successful in your own

right without any help from a super successful father?

Yeah. I'm really proud of that. I'm really proud of, you know-

She didn't get a leg up, for example.

I'm so proud. No, I'm so proud.

I'm so proud of my dad. And, you know, let's be very clear about privilege and all of those

things. I grew up, you know, it's a huge privilege to even have that modeled in your family.

And I also know that even though I didn't grow up, you know, hugely, we didn't grow

up wealthy or anything, my father became very successful when I was a teenager. And there

is a degree of mental safety of that that can't be underscored.

The confidence of that. But Jace and I literally have built this from our lounge room together.

And it has been the hardest thing we have ever done. It has nearly brought us to the brink of

divorce. Lucky we got the divorce out of the way earlier and got back together. But it has been

so tough. It is still so tough. Like business is still so tough. Like it is a great, we're in a

great place now and the business is doing really, really well. But, you know, no one's going to be

able to do anything about it. And so, you know, I think that's a big part of it. And I think that's

a big part of it. And I think that's a big part of it. And I think that's a big part of it.

You never know. When you're a business owner, it never stops being stressful.

So I can ask you a question. Jerry Harvey once said to me on a golf course, I said, mate,

why are you collecting all these crappy old golf balls you're finding on the side that other

people have discarded and putting in a bag? And we're playing golf up in New South Wales. And

this was some years ago and he said to me, and at that stage, he would have been, you know,

billionaire for sure at that stage. And he said to me, Mark, he said, I never think,

or I continually think that one, I don't deserve it. And two, someone could take it away from me

at any time. Because they could. And I think the same. I think the same too. And that drives you.

Of course it does. No, you're a hundred percent right. And sometimes people come into Mamma Mia

and we have a big office now down there. And if they don't, if they don't own a business,

they'll come in and they'll go, wow, it's so big. This is amazing. And if they do own a business

or have owned a business, they'll walk in and they'll go, wow, it's so big. Cause they see

what we know, which is the cost of paying the salary of every person and every computer and

the tea bags in the kitchen and the rent and the, like, they don't, if you're a business owner,

you see this, the, the duck paddling underneath. Right. And you see the stress of it and the risk

and the, um, the uncertainty and all of those things. And, you know, we've had to, you just

metabolize that. So I think most business owners don't spend a lot of time patting themselves on

the back.

And going, gee, look at what we've achieved. Like I literally never, ever, ever do that. I always,

I'm like, what can we do better? What haven't we done well enough today? How can I make this

better? What can we do next? I spend very little time going. Yeah, no, I never, like never, never,

never, never, never, never.

Do you, do you fear failure?

Constantly.

In what, whose eyes? In whose eyes? My eyes, your eyes, your dad's eyes, consumer's eyes.

Having been canceled a few times that, that,

always lives like a big, you know, weight over me. Um, the specter of that, not just because

of the personal damage that does to me mentally and everything, but the implications for the

business, like that's a lot of, um, pressure to carry. Um, but luckily the business exists

kind of separate from me now. And I'm, I've, you know, been backing out the door for 17 years

has been always our mission is to make ourselves redundant within the business.

And I think we're closer than ever to do it.

Doing that. Um, but I always feel failure every, I'm madly competitive, hugely competitive.

But is that because you don't want to fail?

You, you, yeah, I don't want to fail.

Yeah.

Don't want to fail? What kind of, who wants to fail?

So the obsession is not to compete.

I fail all the time, to be clear. Like I fail and I fuck up and I get things wrong and I make

mistakes like all the time. But I try, like I'd prefer not to.

But you're on the mistakes too.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Oh my God. Yes. I mean, I think our mistakes are the most,

most interesting part of our stories. I don't think our successes are.

Yeah, totally. Well, for us it isn't anyway.

I learn a lot more about myself and about business from, from my failures.

We learn about ourselves.

Yeah.

But others sort of are very interested in our successes because, you know, failure is,

is a great driver to be, um, successful. It's a great driver to be competitive.

So in order not to fail, I have to compete. Some people, where do you think that comes from?

Well, women aren't really, women talk, women have to talk a lot about our failures, um,

and our mistakes because...

It's expected?

Yeah. Because it's, you know...

By other women or...?

The world doesn't like a woman who is successful. And yeah, well, the world doesn't like that.

Do you think other women are like that too? Do you think other women also think,

well, I don't like her because she's successful?

When a woman calls another woman ambitious, that's very coded.

For what?

For usually bad mother.

Bitch.

Someone goes, no, not, uh, it can be, but it, it, it's, it often is, oh, she's very ambitious.

It just is.

It's, it's, it's a real burn.

Yeah.

Like it is.

That's mad. I never thought, obviously I don't live in that world, but that's mad. I've never

thought about that.

And it shouldn't be.

Yeah. But when you just, what about when you describe yourself as very ambitious?

What's interesting, I say I cocoon by self-competitive. See, I've internalized that.

Yeah.

And I'm like, I'm not going to say I'm ambitious because that doesn't feel like an okay thing

for a woman to say. I say competitive.

Is, is...

Because for some, somehow you're allowed to be competitive, but saying ambitious feels

like you're a bit too full of yourself. I don't know. So I don't, I don't, yeah, I think of

myself as competitive.

Can you just take me quickly inside a woman's world, the women's world?

Let's go.

Because, you know, obviously I'm not in there, but take me inside for a second.

Okay.

Um, the level of, um, envy that exists in, in, in that world for someone who's more successful

than them or the level of, uh, the level of competition, maybe it's not necessarily, it's

probably, maybe I'm just speculating is less so in, after certain age groups, but more

intense in, um, a cohort maybe.

I might just make this up 20 to 45.

I mean, what's it like?

Is it really competitive?

Men, men aren't like quite like that.

We, we, we don't really give a damn.

I don't think that's true.

Guys I know don't really give a damn about something else.

They're only, I'm, most of us aren't interested in what we're doing.

Yeah.

How we're doing again.

I think the culture kind of has always said there's only room for one woman or like, you

know, a couple of women.

And there's also that thing of generationally, you have to overthrow the generation above

you to take your place.

Right.

Yeah.

It's like the, you know, the line will attack the headline of the pride.

So that, and you know, I've noticed that the people who have the hardest go at me are usually

younger feminists who are wanting to come up and make their name.

And.

Is that because they can take you out?

They think they can take you out to make the name.

They ought to take you out.

Yeah.

I think, I think also to, I think it's also like I've got a daughter and I know that,

that it's really important for people to define themselves in opposition to what's gone before

them.

Which is what I said to you about your dad.

Yeah.

Which is interesting.

I think father, sons and mother, daughter, mother, sorry, father, daughter and mother,

son relationships are a little bit different.

Yeah.

But I think that, um, generations of, of women often in media will feel, and I know that

I did it when I came out of magazines.

I said awful things about magazines.

I think I was really angry about magazine.

I was angry at magazines and, which is a funny thing to say, but I was really horrible about

magazines for a while.

Because I guess I had to establish what I was doing in opposition to magazines.

Like Mamma Mia is everything magazines aren't in that we're not perfect.

We're not about making women feel bad.

We're not about being old fashioned and being stuck and being all photoshopped and all of

those things.

But now I'm sort of, I'm very affectionate and, and I, Mamma Mia stands on the shoulders

of women's magazines and those phenomenal editors, the actual women who ran them, who

were absolute icons and who were not recognized for the incredible business women that they're,

that they were, you know, Iter and Nene and Lisa and Deborah and all of those phenomenal

women, um, women's media and even those bloggers now and, and years ago were, we all stood on

the shoulders of those, of those giants.

Do you feel as though, um, Mia Friedman is now in the same role as Deb and, uh, Lisa and

that you should, or you'd probably do it anyway.

Do you do it?

I should ask you.

Um, encourage young women.

Yeah.

Encourage young women to come in.

If they write you a letter, you know, do encourage young women to come and do what you did with.

We employ more than a hundred of them, probably about 150 staff, probably 140 of them are young

women.

So yeah, that's what, you know, stoked.

Yeah.

I love it.

I mean, it's, I learned so much from them.

They're delightful.

Like, you know, I'm, I'm a big fan of, of cross-generational friendships.

Like I've got great friends who are in their twenties, thirties.

Sixties, seventies, you know, not just in my decade, uh, in my fifties.

And so, yeah, I love it.

I think young women are phenomenal.

I think they're so exciting and interesting and different to us.

And energetic.

And energetic, but they've got very good boundaries, Mark.

They've got very good boundaries.

Yeah.

The young kids generally speaking like that.

It's like, I've got my work and then I'm switching off my work and, you know, I have my right to

disconnect and all of those things.

And I think that's actually really healthy after you get over the part where you go, oh,

back in my day, I didn't.

And that lane, you go, oh my God, I sound like positively geriatric.

And then you go, you know what?

That's actually kind of cool.

That's actually great.

Well, it's also makes sense.

Yeah.

And before I go, I mean, can you throw that over here?

Sure.

I wanted to feel, I really wanted to.

It's really good, isn't it?

Is this for ADHD?

Yeah.

And do you, do you take it everywhere with you?

Everywhere.

I drive with it.

I hold it in my hand while I'm driving.

Well done.

And, and.

It's interesting.

Like I was, I was wondering to myself, is this a little technique that helps you concentrate

on the conversation?

Yeah.

Or, or is it, she's, I know you're very clever and is this, is this, is this a process to

sort of semi-distract me?

Oh, I didn't think about that.

No.

Do you know why this one's really good is because usually I'm used to doing a podcast interview,

either it'll be on Zoom or it'll be with a desk, right?

So usually I do it under the desk so as not to distract anyone.

And also because, you know, I don't know, some people might find this embarrassing and

silly.

I always, you have little toys in meetings.

But this is my special podcasting one because I've got a whole box, you know, a whole basket

of fidgets on my, on my desk and everywhere that I record, but I can't have noisy ones

in podcasts.

No.

I am the absolute arch enemy of, of producers and sound engineers.

So this one someone gave to me because it's silent and I love it.

I love it too.

Can I just have a little bit?

Yeah, yeah, please.

I love it.

And I'll just put it on the camera.

What I love about this, because it wouldn't have picked you up because you're shot from

the waist up.

So why I wanted to.

Was it distracting for you?

No, no, no.

I was, I'm, I love these things.

There's something, I don't know, in a physics sense and a chemistry sense.

So quite fascinating about how this thing doesn't fall apart and doesn't squeeze out.

Yeah.

And it's, it's a fascination to me.

It is.

Yes, it is.

And it's very, it's, I can't explain why it helps me concentrate.

And I've got various different ones, but otherwise I tend to pick my fingers.

So this is actually.

You mean pick the skin off your fingers?

Yeah.

I'll pick the skin off my fingers because I won't even be aware I'm doing it.

I just need something physical while we're talking.

It just helps me concentrate.

Yeah.

It's, it's, my mother was like that.

And of course, ADHD wasn't a diagnosed thing in those days, but she used to pick her fingers

all the time.

Yeah.

And I used to say, mum, what are you doing?

And her fingers would be bleeding.

She wouldn't even know.

Same.

And I'm sure she had ADHD.

ADHD, which is quite interesting, like in hindsight, because some of my kids have got

it.

Some of my sons have got it.

And it's just genetically inheritable as high.

Totally.

It's totally inheritable.

And I probably have it or had it, but I don't know.

But, but I also, you know, I have other techniques to keep myself.

It's a very high incidence of ADHD in entrepreneurs, much higher than the general population because

entrepreneurs have a high appetite for risk.

Yeah.

And people with ADHD aren't able to metabolize consequences very well and risk.

Yeah.

And they like, they've got a high.

They've got a high appetite for risk.

And it's why a lot of young men particularly are at risk of being injured or killed in

accidents.

And also infidelity.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Because yeah, you can't think about the consequence.

It's like this in this moment.

Yeah.

Impulse control is really tricky.

I'm not trying to make an excuse for it, but like, it depends on the relationship anyway,

but like, I'm not trying to make an excuse for it because there's all sorts of different

types of relationships which tolerate, don't tolerate, tolerate some of it, et cetera.

But I do know, and I have read about this, but I've read it in scientific magazines,

but it is now correlated at least.

Interesting.

Whether it's causation, it's correlated to infidelity.

Yeah.

In a lot of cases.

I mean, I would say people like Trump probably has something going on there.

Oh, I think he's got a whole lot of stuff.

He's got a whole lot of stuff.

He'd have a raft of issues.

Yeah, yeah.

Narcissism and everything else.

Narcissism would be probably at the top of the leaderboard.

And perhaps, I wouldn't say psychopathic or in a pathological way, but perhaps a little

bit of psychopathy.

Psychopathy.

There's a lot.

There's a lot going on there.

Yeah.

Definitely.

Which is just great news for all of us for the next four years.

I'm not saying Kamala doesn't have it, because she may have.

Well, I don't know her well enough.

I do know him.

And I have met him and talked to him and interviewed him and stuff like that, because we did during

The Apprentice.

But just my interaction with him, I could say that there is a bit of psychopathy there,

because that's something I've studied.

And there is a book out there.

David Gillespie's book?

Yes.

And it gives you the 21 or 17, I can't remember what it is now.

He's phenomenal.

Yeah, that wasn't really, I interviewed him too.

He's really interesting.

They Walk Among Us, Psychopaths.

Well, someone told me they thought I was, and by the way, I was a female.

So she suggested I buy the book.

So I thought I'd better go and buy the book, as we were partying company.

Oh, I see.

That's a great farewell gift.

Yeah.

So I thought I'd better read it.

Mia Freeman, thanks.

This has been wonderful.

Thanks for your honesty.

I got so much out of it.

Oh, so did I.

Thank you.

Your energy's unreal.

I just enjoyed the conversation so much.

Thanks, guys.

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