From Australian Idol to Podcasting Pioneer: How I Got Here
I used to be quasi-famous.
It was a long time ago and not a place I particularly want to revisit, but as I reflected on how I built Bamby Media into the successful business it is today, there has been one key ingredient.
An unfair advantage.
When I was 21 years old, I decided to try out for Australian Idol. It was the year 2007 and they were allowing contestants to perform their own compositions.
My vision was clear. If more people could hear my songs, I could further my career as a musician.
So I stood in line for hours with thousands of people and had my one shot.
I sang a song I wrote in front of three judges and they happened to love it.
Yes, Kyle Sandilands poked fun of my hair but I was expecting as much. His persona was the “shock jock” so I had pre-empted some sort of light mocking.
It was all in good fun and to be honest, he was probably my favourite of the lot.
I ended up making it into the top 12 which is quite an achievement. To think that I went up against 35,000 singers and made it so far is something to be celebrated.
So live was a little weird for awhile.
I lived in a mansion with the other contestants and we had so much fun together. We had a chef who would make us anything we wanted and a driver who would pick us up and take us anywhere we needed to go.
We did a lot of press, sang on stage with Lionel Richie in the Sydney Opera House, met Zac Efron walking the red carpet at a movie premiere, spent some time rehearsing (though not nearly enough) and I had paparazzi take photos of me in a spa bath that were sold for thousands of dollars.
I had swimmers on. Get your mind out of the gutter.
Long story short, I didn’t end up winning and thank goodness for that.
It wasn’t a program I wanted to win. I just wanted to sing my own songs and see how far I could take it.
Turns out, I could take it quite far.
Before and after Idol I pursued my music career with passion, touring and releasing albums. I completed my Bachelor's Degree in Audio Production at the Conservatorium of Music, recorded in famous studios, worked with incredible musicians, won some awards, had my song featured on a popular television show and even landed an Adidas online advertising campaign.
This was all as a completely independent artist. I didn’t have a manager. I was born completely deaf in one ear. I had no financial backing. The odds weren’t in my favour.
I just had a vision and I was willing to chase it.
Then my first child came along and my vision almost immediately changed.
I didn’t want to be a touring musician anymore and not be around for my family.
I wanted to be there for all the moments that I knew would be fleeting.
Family is my highest value, and to have a career that was so unpredictable wasn’t going to work for me.
So I started thinking about my next move.
I asked myself one question: How could I balance my love for audio with the stability my growing family needed?
Enter podcasting.
What started as a curious exploration during my child's nap times soon became a full-fledged passion. I realised that my background in music and audio production gave me a unique edge in this burgeoning field.
Suddenly, all those years of crafting melodies and producing tracks weren't just a past chapter – they were the foundation for my future.
I knew how to pull together stories, elicit an emotional response from the listener and build connections. The basis of songwriting and my time as a musician was perfectly suited to the world of podcasting.
Starting on Upwork as a freelance podcast editor, I slowly built a reputation for quality work. Word spread, clients multiplied, and before I knew it, Bamby Media was born.
Today, with the help of my team we produce 35-40 podcasts weekly, have worked with nearly 300 clients globally, and our slate of shows have amassed over 13 million downloads.
But success didn't happen overnight and my vision continues to change over time. I’d be worried if it didn’t change.
Through it all, I've learned some valuable lessons:
1. Your past is never wasted: Every skill and experience can be leveraged in new ways. My musical background became my "unfair advantage" in podcasting.
2. Adaptability is key: Life throws curveballs. Being open to new possibilities led me to discover a passion I never knew I had.
3. Quality speaks volumes: We've never spent a dime on advertising. Our growth has been purely through word-of-mouth and through the content we deliver on our Bamby Media YouTube channel. I believe this is a testament to the power of excellent work.
4. Balance is possible: With creativity and support, you can build a successful business while prioritising family.
5. Embrace your journey: Your unique path is what sets you apart. Don't shy away from it – use it to your advantage.
As I continue to grow Bamby Media and even dip my toes back into music, I'm reminded that our careers aren't always linear. They're a collection of experiences, skills, and passions that we can mould into something uniquely ours.
So, to anyone standing at a crossroads in their career, I say this: Look to your past for inspiration, be open to unexpected opportunities, and don't be afraid to remix your skills into something new. Your next act might just be your best one yet.
Transcript:
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[00:00:00] It was recently International Podcast Day and I took the time to go through, probably for the first time ever in the whole existence of Bambi Media, kind of what we've achieved in that period. It's not all the things that we've achieved, but it's certainly some of the more, uh, momentous occasions, some of the milestones that we've been able to achieve.
[00:00:21] And I wanted to share them with you here because I felt like this might be inspiration for other people that have podcasting agencies that are starting their podcasting journey, that are business owners, that are trying to create podcast networks, anyone that's really starting out to kind of maybe give you that little bit of, ah, yes.
[00:00:41] Okay, cool. She did it. So I can also do it. So I'm going to take you back to the beginning. Why Bamboo Media even began in the first place.
[00:00:53] For me, it was really out of necessity. So prior to this business, I was a musician and a songwriter for probably about a decade. I have. Music really was the only thing that I ever wanted to do. I have been a singer since I was tiny, I did musicals, I did lots of singing at Stedford's, just singing, singing, singing, you know?
[00:01:16] And then I started to get into songwriting and I loved to songwrite and I started writing songs and loved every second of it. Then I went on to Australian Idol when I was 21, I think, and auditioned for that, that year, because I found out that you could sing your own song. And so I sang this song called Jacqueline, which is a song I wrote about two people that live next door to each other and didn't hadn't ever told each other that they liked each other.
[00:01:44] And that song really resonated with people. It got me through. The judging panel, I, you know, made it into the top 12. Um, there was 35, 000 other people that tried out and I made it into this. TV [00:02:00] show, which was insanity. Like it was just the craziest thing. I can't actually even believe that it was me that did that.
[00:02:08] Just, it feels like a completely different life. And yet it was me. In fact, that did all those things. I had a driver. We lived in a mansion. I had a chef, like, publicity all over the place, paparazzi, it was in magazines, on radio shows, all this stuff. That was a time in my life that was really cool, but also really, really stressful because being on a TV show as a musician, which they didn't treat you like musicians, they didn't really treat you like songwriters, Treated you like you were on a reality tv show And so it wasn't really in the best interest Of the artists how they actually formed that show you didn't get a lot of rehearsal time in my case I'm completely deaf in one ear And so I had a few arguments with the producers of the show because they didn't give us any in ears.
[00:03:04] They didn't give us audio like in our ears. And for me, that's a real problem. I mean, I can't walk around the stage like other people and have monitors that I can listen to if it's too far away and all this stuff. Sound comes in and I have one ear. It's very hard for me to pitch. Like I can't get my pitch if I can't hear the rest of the sound and the band.
[00:03:24] So I really struggled with that program because I felt like I was gypped a little bit as far as it not being about the performer and not being about the musician, it was about the judges and being about the show in general. So, uh, that at the end of that show, I made a lot of wonderful friends. I. Loved the experience from that perspective and then when I came back home I was a little bit almost like agoraphobic for a while because you couldn't go anywhere.
[00:03:53] There was just people Everywhere that knew what you look like you couldn't go to the grocery store without people [00:04:00] wanting you Signature or staring at you weirdly when you're looking for some apples. Like it was crazy, it was really, really weird walking down the street. And you had these kids just looking up at you like, Oh, and this was time before social media really, even, you know, there was sort of, Facebook was just kind of starting to get going, but it wasn't really much else going on.
[00:04:20] So there wasn't streaming channels. You know, we, we had millions of people tuning into the TV show. And so you were really recognized everywhere. so I did that and I'm glad I did it. And it, um, it taught me a lot. And then from there, I had also been doing a audio production degree at the conservatorium of music through that period.
[00:04:43] I fell in love with audio recordings. So I worked in a lot of different recording studios when I was working on my album. And I met a lot of people through that. I love the actual production of music, obsessed with microphones, microphones. Like that side of things to me, just the technicalities, the way things sound, the effects that you could use, the plugins, what the EQs and the compressions and all these things was stuff that I just loved.
[00:05:08] So when I finished on Australian Idol and I came back to sort of real life, I put together this album that then I released with the help of Brandon Anthony, who is a fantastic producer. And. I, that was great, you know, and then I got that music featured in on film and TV. I got it featured in NBC, CTV, uh, Foxtel.
[00:05:31] There's some of it online now as well. I had it featured on an Adidas online campaign, short films. All things like just a bunch of stuff happened through that period, which was really cool as an independent artist. It was really cool to be able to achieve all those things of which I still get royalties for today, which is really nice.
[00:05:51] It's not a lot of money, but it's still that little like, Oh yeah, you know, that little ping that you get when you get that little sort of [00:06:00] notification. Which is fun. So I continue to do that. I did a lot of touring. I gave back to the community a lot. I went out and I helped rural communities, uh, write songs and put together an album through a Songs of the Seraph program, thanks to QMusic.
[00:06:15] Then I released another album called On So It Goes. Which I produced completely on my own and then had it mixed by Brendan and mastered by Sterling sound over in the U S and that was a project that was a labor of love. Something I was really passionate about doing, just doing it all myself was really cool and recorded a lot of that in my home studio.
[00:06:35] So then I learned those skills of how to record at home, how to use isolation booths, how to use different microphones and, and put them together with a set up That was achievable for people to do without having to go to a big studio. So I recorded that whole thing myself. I had a big album launch for that.
[00:06:53] I had a string quartet and a grand piano and a beautiful backup singers and all the things. And I was pregnant at the time. I was five months pregnant with my first child with my husband through all that period. Uh, my husband was also doing degrees and he was studying to become a doctor and then he eventually finished that degree and then we had to move.
[00:07:14] Yeah. And by then I had a child who was 13 months old, something like that, and we had to move up north. That was probably one of the worst years of my entire life. It was so hot. Cairns is where we moved to. It's a beautiful place, like, where the sort of rainforest meets the ocean. There's really nowhere that I found that's as special as that as far as how it looks.
[00:07:38] But it was so hot, so humid, and I hated it. I really, really hated it. I was isolated from my friends and family. There was no one up there that I knew. And my husband was a doctor by this point. So he was an intern. He was never around. And I was with this. I was with a baby at that point, and this was all new to me, and my mental health [00:08:00] really suffered through that period.
[00:08:01] I got very anxious, very stressed, all things I'd never really had before. Had this sense of, like, no identity, or not no identity, but not having any time to do anything for myself anymore. And then I started to think more long term at that point, how was my life going to go? Like, how was this going to work with a child and potentially wanting to have another one?
[00:08:23] And then also be a touring musician. Like it just that to me does not make sense. And with my husband being a doctor as well, like who's going to look after these children, how is this going to work? And. It really made me start to think about where do I want my life to actually go? And how do I want my family unit to exist amongst the things that we also want to achieve.
[00:08:45] And to me, having a family and being there for them was a massive deal. I grew up with a, um, very supportive family. Mom and dad were just amazing. My dad is an entrepreneur himself though, and was, Just very rarely around. He often worked seven days a week, very long hours. And I didn't want that for my children.
[00:09:09] I didn't want to be an entrepreneur or a person that wasn't around. It was very important for us to have a unit where I felt like I could be there to pick them up, to drop them off, to have those little chats with thing with them when things were going wrong and. Do all of those things. So I wanted to try and find some way of, of building that, uh, for myself.
[00:09:31] So then I started to think about how could I make this happen? What could I do that wasn't like, or being a musician, but it was kind of adjacent to that field. And I put myself on Upwork as a audio editor because I'd been doing some transcription work through rev. com just because I love to type. I was just sort of typing stuff and, you know, doing that in naps and listening to things.
[00:09:54] And then one day I started editing, I started transcribing this thing called [00:10:00] a podcast. And I was like, what the hell is a podcast? I'd never heard of it at this point. This is quite a long time ago now. And when I listened to it, the more I was like, wow, this is really cool. Like I could totally. You know, because it's audio editing, which is something I'm very skilled at already from my production degree.
[00:10:18] It's also crafting a story. It's storytelling. It's using voice. It's audio adjacent. This seems like it would be perfect. So I put myself, I put my. Self out there on Upwork as a freelancer and started getting audio editing jobs for podcasts. And this was probably, uh, 10 years ago. Now I started to do that and I got this job with this client over in the U S which completely changed my life.
[00:10:46] The trajectory of it all at this point, because it was one of these projects where it was already quite high profile. I suppose the people that were on the show were. Quite well known in the U. S. I could help craft the story. I could help create emotion by using sound effects, folly music. And it was this beautiful, like integration of all the skills I already had.
[00:11:08] When people talk about this unfair advantage, I absolutely stepped into this, into the podcasting space with the unfair advantage of already knowing, um, how to craft a story and how to pull emotion out of people. So. I started working with them, and it was just one of the best things that I've ever done in my life.
[00:11:28] And then as time went on, I completely fell in love with it as a format, and I just started getting more and more work. And I started getting referrals, and I started getting more people interested in what I was doing on Upwork. I became more Top rated on Upwork, just as a freelancer, just working with a bunch of people doing a whole bunch of audio editing work and more podcasts.
[00:11:48] And it just grew and grew and grew. And then through this period, I was just working naps, like when my child was napping and nights. So I was working a lot, but when she was [00:12:00] asleep and so this kept going and kept going and kept going. And then my husband was a doctor by then as well. And then we had our second child.
[00:12:08] And the business was really starting to take off even more. I had employed my first employee by then as well. And it would really, really grown quite a lot. I'd already had my Bambi media logo. Everything was sort of trugging along there, but still working just nights. But also I was now able to work two times a week in full days because we'd move back to where we are based.
[00:12:32] And my mother was able to take the reins on caring for the children a couple of times a week, which was just insane. Like just the help that I received then how my mental health improved having a village around me, all of those things made a massive difference to me being able to run my business and then kind of a curve ball hit us where.
[00:12:53] My husband came to me one day and he had been a doctor for quite a few years by then and he said I can't do this anymore. I don't want to be a doctor. I don't want to have the life where I'm never around and I'm continually having to study for more and more exams and he was very far along at this point and but it wasn't a surprise to me that he didn't want to do it anymore because it never felt like me knowing him that it was something that really lit him up.
[00:13:24] him up. He was always my like roadie as a musician. He did my photography, a lot of my graphic work as well. Very creative, a guitarist as well, all sorts of that stuff. And so when he said, I don't want to be a doctor anymore, it was kind of like a relief in a way too, where I just went, Oh man, good. Like make some decisions for yourself that are just for you, you know?
[00:13:51] And so I said, fine. That's good, you know, just stop and we'll figure it out. And then that [00:14:00] was also through the period where COVID was just about to hit. So he got out just at the time when he would have then potentially been extremely busy as a doctor. And then the business really took off after that. I wasn't having to do so much kid stuff.
[00:14:17] I was able to then work and transition more into a full time role. And it grew so quickly. Um, once I was able to really take the time and the reins to do that. And I had said to him, well, cool, you know, you're going to be the stay at home dad. Now that's awesome. Like he wanted to do that, but then very quickly through that, he looked at what I was doing, especially on the graphics side, uh, where it was, it was not something I was very good at, but it was something that.
[00:14:43] clients wanted and that I could do good enough, he then realized like, actually, I think I should help you. I could take this area on because it was something he was very skilled at. So quickly transitioned to him being a stay at home dad and, um, me working to then us both working to then having children that were then always home because of lockdown during COVID.
[00:15:07] And then by then we had two other employees and the business was insane. It was very busy through that period. We took on a lot of, a lot more clients just because everyone wanted a podcast, but we could handle it. The capabilities we had were there. We hired more staff. We did more. It continued to grow.
[00:15:27] And it was a lot of referrals. We have never marketed our business ever as far as like, I've never spent money on advertising to advertise our services. It's really just word of mouth and referrals up till that point. And even today, the only thing I do is the YouTube channel to help grow our business in, in a way that, you know, draws people into our world and we see how we can help.
[00:15:51] But so all that through, through all that period, it was just referral, which is a testament to the strength of us as a business, as [00:16:00] far as the work, the quality of the work that we did. And I think that's the most important thing is to make sure that whatever you're doing as a business owner. As long as the quality of your work and the service that you provide is of a very high standard, then you will get referrals.
[00:16:14] You absolutely will. I can't see a way where you wouldn't. People will want to refer you because you're doing a good job. And so that continued to be the way we grew. We've hired more staff and we've continued to grow from there. And now being almost a decade into this business and then reflecting on this through the international podcast day, there were a few things that I looked at that actually blew my mind as to how we are where we are from where I started in 2015 with a logo that I designed myself, which I was so excited for because it was a logo, even though it wasn't very good.
[00:16:49] And it was very generic to then getting to a point where I could you. Get, commission one of our friends, uh, an artist and illustrator who also came and worked for Bambi media as well to create the logo that you see today. That was a huge step to me. That was one of the biggest steps of where I then went, I want a logo that represents us as a business.
[00:17:08] So when that happened, that was a really, really big deal. And then over the past decade, when I looked at how many clients we've worked with, so even though today we work with probably on a weekly basis, we're probably sitting around 35 to 40 podcasts that we produce every week. Overall, in the last decade, we've worked with more like 270 or maybe close to 300 clients, which is just a phenomenal amount of.
[00:17:39] People, when you think about that and businesses that we've helped serve and launch podcasts for and grow and, you know, run tutorials for and masterclasses and consults and all that. So that to me is huge that we've worked with that many people. And then I started this whole thing. Like that's crazy to me.
[00:17:57] That's really, really cool. We've [00:18:00] also tried to collate how many downloads have been received from our clients. And these are only the clients that we work on. Like these aren't clients that we just did a consult for, or we did a one off thing for. These are clients that we worked on for oftentimes a long period of time, if we're not still working with them today.
[00:18:19] And it's based on how much they generated during our time together, not what they've done Sort of since, and we worked it out to be about 13 million downloads in that period. 13 million is a massive number. And I know the biggest podcasts in the world get a lot more downloads than that, but we're working with niche podcasts in niche industries that serve mostly kind of B2B.
[00:18:44] And to get that many downloads just is. It's great. Like it's, I'm just yay, you know, to all of them for being able to achieve those numbers now, when, with the roster we work with currently, we probably sit around 110 to 140, 000 downloads ish a month on the roster that we have, which are just, again, huge numbers for niche podcasts, very tailored audiences, re engaged audiences.
[00:19:11] And I love serving that independent B2B field, although I do love working with the larger brands and we have certainly done that before as well. I do really love that, but I also appreciate that a lot of the podcasting industry is built on that smaller niche with those smaller downloads as well. And now we have a team of five during the busy periods.
[00:19:31] We have, you know, up to eight or nine staff depending, but right now we're sitting at a A staff level of five, and we can support a lot of podcasters through that period. I have this YouTube channel that I'm growing and I'm just, I'm, you know, close to getting to that a thousand SCR subscribers, which is something that I've just so been enjoying doing.
[00:19:55] seeing how it goes for us, because again, we're very niche, very niche [00:20:00] topics. I love talking about microphones. A lot of what I talk about is putting microphone, like battling them against each other, software tips, tools, tricks, things for podcasters and growing that channel to me is like such a good time.
[00:20:15] Responding to all your comments is something that just gives me so much joy. So keep doing that. Let me know what you thought of this video as well. It's just me talking to you about how I got to where I am, the very long process that it has taken. And I want you to think about that. Like if you're just starting your journey and whatever it is, whatever business you're doing, it's not something that is going to happen quickly.
[00:20:40] And you're going to have to leverage your prior skills. Like that's probably the quickest way to getting somewhere is if you have prior skills in something, how can those skills be transferred into something else? If you're trying to build a business and you've got skills somewhere, try and bring them into the new thing so that you're not starting from super low bottom, you know, the very bottom.
[00:21:04] But how can you incorporate things and people talk about that unfair advantage all the time? What is your unfair advantage and how can you incorporate it? Because I don't think that You know me being a musician before and then not doing that anymore I don't think I don't feel like that is a waste at all.
[00:21:24] I feel like it's leveraged Where I am now And I'm still going back to music. I'm working on a new slate of material at the moment, but I just want you to know that even if you let something go, firstly, you never have to let it go completely. And secondly, how can you use those skills to piggyback onto something that may be better suited to your life, like where you want to go with things as well.
[00:21:49] That's it for me. I hope you liked that and I'll chat to you again [00:22:00] soon.
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