Building a $20M-Donating Ticketing Platform Without Selling Out on Culture

James Humpherson, Global GM and first employee at Humanitix — the world's first humane ticketing platform — reveals how a not-for-profit tech company has turned event ticket sales into more than $20 million in donations for high-impact charities, all while out-competing Eventbrite and other major players on product, price and support.

In this episode, James shares his journey from backpacking through South America to becoming employee #1 at a scrappy startup, the "chicken and egg" problem of selling mission versus product, why the mass market only adopts what makes commercial sense, and the biggest hiring mistakes made scaling into the US, UK and beyond. He also opens up on leadership, building trust in high-performance sales cultures, and what it really takes to get a not-for-profit to compete — and win — against traditional SaaS businesses.

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Host & Guest
➡︎ James Bergl (The Gentle Giant)
➡︎ James Humpherson, Humanitix

Videographers/Editors: Romain Pondard/Klippable
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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

We hear on the calls, on the phones, all of the time people are just blown away. They're like, it's a no-brainer. How do you do that? If you want the mass market to adopt your product, there needs to be in order to do so.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

That's wholesome. James Humpherson, one of Australia's leading young social entrepreneurs, as Global GM and the first employee of Humanitix, the world's first humane ticketing platform, he's helped transform event ticket sales into more than $20 million in donations for high impact nonprofits.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Today he explains how to build a world-class commercial product while creating extraordinary impact.

SPEAKER_03 0:39

I want to create a space where people can become truly the best versions of themselves. I love to invest in people deeply, have beautiful and nuanced relationships with them.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

What did you implement specifically that allowed you to identify and differentiate the facade from actually what is truly the right fit?

SPEAKER_03 1:01

That's a bloody tough question.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

I think Well, incredibly um excited, James, to have you uh on Battle Scars of a SaaS Leader um podcast. Um you and I have got to know each other for probably the last nine months or so. And like I've been really excited to get you on the show. One, because I think you're you got an incredible story, two, because you're an incredible bloke um overall, but also because Humanitics is an incredibly unique um business. And I'm gonna get you to explain it because uh I'm incorrect in actually probably calling it a business. Um it's a not-for-profit technology organization, um, but Aussie made, homegrown, gone global, and you were first employee on the ground about eight years ago, right? So take us away to tell us, um, I guess a quick introduction to yourself and then tell us a little bit about humanitics and where you play in the market and and really you know what it means to be a not-for-profit technology business.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Yeah, hey, it's a pleasure to be here. Um myself, I'm the global GM. And so primarily, as is quite typical in a in a startup scale-up experience, you wear many hats, but primarily overseeing the sales team kind of globally, involvement in recruitment, performance management, all those kind of good fun things that I'm sure we're gonna delve deep into. Humanities itself, we are we are a business, but the framework that underpins it is a registered charity. And so in each region we operate in, we are a registered charity. And what that means is that different to a typical for-profit company, there's no shareholders, there's no equity. We were initially philanthropically funded. And what we do in s with our profits is that instead of those funding shareholder wealth, we use those profits to fund some most impactful charities we can find around the world.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Incredible. And I I saw on your website so far to date, you've contributed and donated north of $20 million to charities, which is phenomenal. I mean, how does that feel that you were first going on the ground and the impact that you've already had, still on your way up as an organization?

SPEAKER_03 3:16

It's it's pretty surreal. I think you know, it takes 10 years to create an overnight success. It's something that we've been working at for a really long time. It's an interesting one because it is such an amazing outcome, but we also have huge goals and a vision for where we want to get the impact to. So one of the things we struggle with is actually celebrating the wins along the way. But as of this $20 million donation, it's a huge milestone. And we've had Hugh Jackman get on board as an ambassador and our head of impact and a few other really exciting things start to shift as we become a market leader in the Australian landscape. And uh the US and UK is not too far behind. So there's still a lot to go, but it's really exciting to see the model being really well received by event hosts, customers, and and other people uh abroad as well.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

I got introduced to Humanitics a couple of years ago. I I was um I had a couple of kids, and that took me out of um out of action for quite a while. But as soon as I was in a position to leave the house, I went on. I thought, let's go to see a couple of shows. And a couple of the shows I went to, I was buying my my ticket through Humanitics. I thought, well, that's interesting. I haven't heard of them before. It's usually Eventbrite, I think, is the main platform. Like, where do you fit in that event landscape um and and ticketing um sector?

SPEAKER_03 4:35

Yeah. So Humanitics is a self-service events ticketing platform, so very similar to Event Prime. So we operate in that small to medium-sized events landscape. We work with you know 35,000-person multi-day music festivals, conferences, garlic dinners, food and wine festivals. But mom and dads can also jump on the product, run a cooking class or a workshop, sell tickets, take payment, manage data. And so we kind of operate in that in that space now.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

I mean, I um my contribution is is small for I in the grand scheme of things, but I went to buy my two-app tickets um for Anzac Day a couple of weeks ago, and it was a humanitics landing page. And the ticket fee, it said a couple of bucks or whatever it was, it said this is going to um you know, two dollars towards helping um your child poverty or something like that. And the psychology of me buying that, I actually I got a positive endorping kick going, actually, I'm I'm doing something good as opposed to um to thinking, you know, this is just an additional cost, it's actually me helping.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

So yes, I mean those microtransactions they add up to billions of dollars every single year globally. Yeah. And there's no love for ticketing platforms. In fact, in the events landscape, it's really a bit of a necessary evil. And there are shades of gray. There's some some awesome operators and some people that are definitely on the opposite end of the spectrum. But our whole take was well, can you create a company that provides a product at a better price than what exists, that has better support than what exists in the market, a better tech product, and then it just so happens that the profits that we make actually fund these incredible causes. And took us a while to get to that point from a product perspective. But now it's actually surpassed a lot of our major competitors, which is a really interesting space to be in.

SPEAKER_02 6:27

I'm really keen to to drill into how you've been able to market and and actually build that um that mass momentum as well. But you know, you mentioned that it takes 10 years to achieve an overnight success. Um, because is Humanitics is is around 10 years old now? Correct. Yeah. So what I also want to understand, so you've been there, you know, employee number one, working there with the co-founders, um, not long out of uh university, and you jump in. What what what what did you think you were jumping into at that moment in time? Like there wasn't really a business established. Like what was what were you going through your mind? Like, what was your motive at that moment in time as a as a human, as an individual, and what was it that attracted to you about this type of opportunity?

SPEAKER_03 7:08

Yeah. I studied finance and economics at university. And the traditional pathway there is to head into finance, maybe corporate finance, you know, grind that out for 20 plus years and you know, make some money, build a financial foundation. And very quickly, I started in the finance space, but was pretty jaded by it. And instead of going down that traditional path, I actually like backpacked through South America for seven months and went on this kind of eat pray love journey and trying to understand what a meaningful life looks like to me? What are the values that I want to live by? And at the back end of that trip, I actually did a little, a little micro trip. And I was in the border of Bangladesh and Myanmar on a just a mountain biking trip. And I was journaling and I was writing down exactly the space that I wanted to enter. And I was really fascinated by social enterprise models. I was really fascinated by startups and the tech space. And I knew that I come from a background where my family all grew up here in Sydney. They've always been incredibly supportive. And the narrative that I'd sold myself is that I could make a ton of mistakes up until I'm 30 and then draw the line in the sand and then just go back into the corporate sector and and then uh and then try and kind of build a life from there. So having that foundation and fallback created space for me to be really intentional and then be able to take some risks from a career perspective. And so then I heard Josh, one of my co-founders, pitch Humanitics for one of the first times in a small dingy Chinatown uh networking event. And it just clicked. It was, yep, amazing. There's a pain point in an industry. If you can provide an amazing product and everything goes back to an amazing cause, then wow, that's that that has something. But it wasn't always like sunshine and rainbows on that journey.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Yeah, I can imagine. That's um like a really authentic response. And um, yeah, thank you for sharing that as well. Uh you see so you you come in, you've you sort of um yeah, do some some soul searching, find out that this is this is directionally where you can potentially achieve both financial comfort, but also a sense of fulfillment, like life fulfillment. Um you find Humanitics 10 years ago. At what point was it that it started to transition from you know, this is a crazy start at which I'm I'm given a crack, and I I know I've got a little bit of support and runway if I need it for a period of time. What was the the tipping point if that if there was such a thing when you went from this is turning into a business or this is turning into something that is sustainable and is actually building momentum?

SPEAKER_03 10:01

The biggest thing that I needed to keep in mind is that despite having this really strong vision as to where we could get to, you need to have those check-in points, those routine moments where you're assessing where the business is at, where you're at, how's it feeling, and then to be able to like decide is this worth another three, six months investment? Luckily, as we went on that journey, we were able to win clients, get a little bit of momentum. And I think the turning point for us was actually when we accessed major funding from Atlassians Foundation, where we'd built a bit of a track record in our first year of operating. We sold five and a half million tickets from just contacting everybody we know. We had no sales playbook, it was just network hustle, skull dragging people onto the product, um, over-servicing from a support perspective, but people sharing this vision for where we wanted to get to with this impact model. And when we got that major funding, it that was the moment to take stock and go wow, like there's we've believed in this, and we have some customers that believe in this, but now external parties want to actually see this thrive from an impact perspective, and they're willing to put their money where their mouth is in order to make it a reality.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Incredible. And there's there's a bit of a chicken in an egg in these sort of situations. Um, do you sell the vision first or do you build the product? Um, so you've actually got something to sell. Talk to me a little bit about uh the the chicken in the egg situation as you went and had those early on conversations.

SPEAKER_03 11:43

It's really hard. The the model, and it's still the case to this day, is what gets cut through, but it's the product and the support and the pricing that is why people make a decision now to use Humanitics. That wasn't always the case. We had a really basic product to begin with, really limited on tech. Um, people were making compromises in order to use us because it was so deeply aligned with their values. And that wasn't the majority of the market. We had to find those early adopters that were willing to see the vision where we wanted to get to, and then buy in on that journey and were willing to make compromises with their own businesses. A lot of these people were small business owners here in Australia or charity gala dinners was another pocket of the events landscape where the model resonated because there was a strong cost saving. But the mission at in those early days is what allowed us to get in those doors and find some small pockets of society that believed in it and were willing to take a chance and compromise on the tech. But you can't run that forever. You're not going to get the mass market to adopt a product if you're constantly asking them to either pay a premium for a product just because it does good or to make huge financial or technical sacrifices from a product perspective.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

So yeah, finding the I guess the early adopters that buy into your mission and your vision. Yes. Um bringing them on the journey initially and being open and realistic that there's going to be a couple of compromises, but really being a great storyteller in a way and saying like this is what we are building, and you're you're the foundational fabric that's going to help us to get there early on.

SPEAKER_03 13:29

The one of the most exciting things on that journey as we were hustling for first clients was that we were specifically targeting the nonprofit sector because we saw cost savings, simple technical usage, and we thought, wow, that's a no-brainer. They're getting fleeced by these platforms. That's that's absolutely the pocket we should start to target. What ended up happening is we had the model resonating in that pocket, but we also had this real small subsection of the underground techno scene running illegal warehouse parties and underground raves and doofs out in the in the bush. And that was just spinning completely separate, regardless of any business development in that space. And so to have people sign up to a product that you've never had a conversation with them before, and then call them and ask how they found out about you, and they've just they've just heard through word of mouth that there's this kind of counter counterculture model uh that's out there that they could ticket their events on was yeah, some huge, some huge little highs, and that pocket of event organizers use us ex extensively today as well.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

And even today, yeah. Incredible. What did the the founding team for the first few years look like from a capability, you know, go to market versus technical and product and support and and like how did that evolve over time?

SPEAKER_03 15:01

My co-founders both come from uh one one comes from a financial hedge fund background and the other was a tech consultant at Accenture, but no startup and like real deep tech experience, um, but really strong like commercial judgment. And so when you have people that the leadership early days very curious uh and just have a real strong aptitude and an eagerness to just figure out what the problem is. And uh we managed to then find an amazing CTO early days who was had an innate ability to whip up something really quickly as a product that as an MVP allowed us to then start getting the flyball spinning. But early days when you don't have you've got a strong mission, you don't have a huge amount of funding, you end up having to obviously drive the mission component, but you end up attracting really deeply curious people that want to build careers of purpose and meaning. They want to leverage a commercial skill set in order to do good. And and we kind of fit in this kind of beautiful little like pocket that then attracted that type of talent.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Yeah, incredible. You mentioned that the the early adopters, a lot of them were were mission-driven and they they wanted to to contribute probably from the inside out of who they were, what they stood for as individuals, and that there's still that um community today that's that are that way inclined and and believe in doing good. But from a business and an economics perspective today, does selling social enterprise um and and uh a mission and a vision that is is help is good for the world, does that override an ROI conversation? Or are you in conversations with certain people where it's still just, you know, I love what you're doing, but like it we need to talk dollars and cents. Like that's the fundamental.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

I think the biggest thing that people get wrong with the social enterprise space is that if you want the mass market to adopt your product, there needs to be a really strong commercial incentive in order to do so. So if we're if we are selling a product like Humanitics to business owners, it's a B2B product, and we're asking people to compromise on price and pay an ethical premium to use a product, and then the support is worse than what can be accessed in the market, and the tech just isn't there, but everything is going to a good cause, you get kind of laughed out of the room, or you'll only be able to actually access a really small pocket of event organizers. And so our model will only have the biggest impact it possibly can if we get the mass market to adopt the product. So that's why we've approached it through the lens of this needs to be the best commercial decision for operators. Yeah. And then it's a nice to have the fact that everything goes back to a good cause. And if you can hit that where it's a better outcome for the event host, it's a better outcome for the end consumer because of the price point, and it's a better outcome for society, then it's kind of this no-brainer effect, which we hear on the calls, on the phones all of the time. People are just blown away, they're like, it's a it's a no-brainer.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

And when we talk about the the commercial aspect, so if you're selling this to a tech company that's running a big conference for 50,000 people, there's no cost is there a cost for them to use the platform or is it just the the clip on each ticket that is sold?

SPEAKER_03 18:23

Yeah. The model is designed such that the end consumer is the one that ends up paying for the product in the form of a booking fee. Yeah. And so that includes credit card fees, GST, etc. Yeah. So the end the organizer that decides on the product, they're not the ones that are fundamentally paying for the product.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

But the there's a cost of a um of bad tech, I guess, particularly from a support perspective.

SPEAKER_03 18:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Is would would you say that's the primary um the challenge?

SPEAKER_03 18:51

Is if is it support or there are there are multiple challenges that certain types of event hosts will experience. And the pocket that ticketing plays in events is that it really is the conduit. It really is the intersection of payment and collection of data. And if you're running an event and you have a multi-day music festival and you go live and your ticketing form platform crashes, that's a huge amount of lost revenue. And so it's something that can go so wrong so quickly if you choose the wrong the wrong partner. And then there are also like strong commercial reasons why, depending on the type of event organizer that's choosing a product, whether they need access to funds, or there are a variety of different things that are that sit outside of like less fees, but you know, revenue generated, there's a bunch of different tools that are really important to hosts that that sit outside of just like a minimizing of risk in in using a platform.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

I want to talk a little bit about um the team that you've built. Um like how how many employees is Humanitics and you're a global business now? Like what is what does the team look like today?

SPEAKER_03 20:03

Uh we have a team of just over 80, and that's across Australia, New Zealand, uh, Denver in the US, and then Edinburgh in the UK.

unknown 20:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

Yeah, brilliant. And when you were hiring your initial founding team, what were the core characteristics that you looked for to say that this is a humanitics person?

SPEAKER_03 20:23

We've done a hell of a lot of learning on that journey. And where we've come to, and interestingly, what has kind of naturally evolved from that process is that we look for people that are deeply curious. They are then typically leaving living life with some sort of deep value and intention and a strong communicators. And so if they have a strong reason as to why they're here, why they're wanting to do the thing, why they're wanting to improve and add value, then those are the people as like a broad encapsulation of a value that we kind of deeply seek to bring into the team.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

And has that changed over time? And as you look forward, and and I want to talk about US expansion in particular in a minute, um, and as you're looking to scale, can you scale a sales team with those qualities? I I guess you've done it so far, but is is that what's what's a core part of your hiring success is being able to find that right cultural fit.

SPEAKER_03 21:22

Yeah, the interesting thing is we have this constant tension between growth, because the faster we can grow, the more impact we can have with the model. But because we can actually never sell humanitics, what that means is that this is also our forever home. And so there's a constantly in like healthy tension between these two things. Now, when you apply it to a sales landscape, that still extends, right? We need uh we need to continue to scale our sales team. They need to be hitting quota, exceeding quota, bringing in major deals and driving the revenue of the business. But That can't be the only metric that we use to ensure that there's success within the sales team. So we, as part of our recruitment process, we have a screening, we have a technical, but the longest part of our interview process is actually our cultural values-based interview, where we really prime candidates to take the mask off and really show us who they're on a human-to-human level. And we've had some of the most beautiful and nuanced and crazy and fascinating conversations with candidates that have actually ended up being some of the most incredible performers in our organization. Because we also are able to create a space where it allows people to fundamentally, it's corny to say, but bring bring their true selves to work and create a space where people can grow and evolve, not just in their professional context, but the intertwining of that with the personal journey as well.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Yeah, it's it's fascinating because that I I share that belief that the cultural fit, particularly in in young companies and high growth companies, the culture eats strategy for breakfast. I think it's it's a saying that I've I used to always um kind of live by as well. And you have an incredible culture. Um but on the like if we look at a traditional SaaS business, often it's a a sales culture, and the sales number in the sales culture is very metrics driven, numbers driven, kind of money driven to a certain extent. And and actually that's not who you are as an organization. It's it's really more um it's more about finding that it's a delicate balance, I imagine. How do we get someone that's commercially astute, that's driven by a challenge, is happy to pick up the phone and make cold calls, but is also like a really high integrity, good quality person as well. What's the the biggest mistake that you've made in hiring?

SPEAKER_03 23:57

I made a ton. I think the biggest mistake that we've made in hiring was probably as we entered the US market. And I don't know if there's anything we could have fundamentally done differently, but when you apply the lens that you have interviews and conversations through here in the Australian market and the New Zealand market, it's very easy to get a read on people who understand, you know, more who is this person at their core. And the challenge that we experience entering the US market is that it's a it's a really interesting group of people that are entering the tech landscape. And it was actually quite hard to discern between what is truly what is authenticity with this person, what is uh like a deep hunger and drive versus what is just the the smoke and mirrors and the the ego and the seeking to be perceived to be a high performer without actually putting in the work to then receive the outcomes. So there were early days in the US expansion where we we made some pretty poor hires and it required taking stock, recognizing when somebody has been a poor hire from a cultural or from a uh a KPIs perspective, and being very quick to then you know change tact and and remove them from the team as well.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

I want to double-click on this piece because it's really interesting, and it takes me back to my first um my first sales management job when I came over to Australia um in 2013 and I had to hire someone for the first time, and I didn't get any interview coaching or what to look for, and and I would ask them questions and I would say, Do you like cold calling? They're like, Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's part of the job, you know, I know I've got to do it. And I was like, All right, you're hired. Um and and I you have to learn, I had to learn too, you can't take what they say on face value, you've got to look at like those underlying traits. But um, I I think that's maybe what you're saying is you're getting told one thing, but it's actually it's a facade in a way. What did you implement um specifically that allowed you to um identify and differentiate the facade from actually what is truly the right fit?

SPEAKER_03 26:23

That's a bloody tough question. I think similar to sales, in that it is a it is the refinement of a process and you know the thousand brush strokes that then create the masterpiece, in that it just takes time to develop a process that allows you to ask questions that are fundamentally at the core of what you're seeking. And so that's where like the curiosity curiosity questioning has become really important, the deep values, the deep uh intention that we seek. And so a lot of those things early days when we're expanding into the US market, if somebody said that they wanted to do sales and they they looked like they could do the thing and they're pretty chatty, we'd we'd give them a shot. But if somebody doesn't have a deep desire to build a bit of a career in sales and have a strong why, then we found out pretty quickly that they're not going to have the longevity and there's not going to be that coachability and that eagerness to when things get hard, as is very typical when you're starting out in sales, like have the perseverance and the ability to really endure. And so those is probably that's probably where we made the most mistakes is like taking people on face value without understanding exactly why does this person want to be here, not just from a a values or a mission perspective, but truly from a a skill and developing a craft perspective.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Yeah. And I've I've seen and I've heard that myself. Candidates pass and fail, and the feedbacks, I didn't understand their why. And I think that that for those that are listening is is a really fundamental part of the interview process, is is understanding someone's why. And on that note, do you have like a go-to question or mechanism to extract their why or try to extract their why? You may not get it, and that's actually a qualifier right there.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

I like to ask people that if at Humanitics there's any role that they could do, whether it's sales or CS or marketing or or something else, like what is the space that actually like they really want to refine a skill set or lean into? What are they most curious about? And if they start to then go on a narrative that isn't sales, I start to then probe. Okay, well, why why that path? And then kind of circle back to well, why not why not sales? Why was that not the top answer? And so these questions can be like they can give you a signal, but it's not the full story. And so I think it's a matter of just having nuanced conversations with individuals to try and surface what's actually underneath.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

When you're especially when you're over here in Australia and you're building a team in North America, like you've identified that there there are cultural differences in how people show up and present themselves, and then you've gone over to the UK and Scotland and Edinburgh. Um, do you notice the nuances in Edinburgh? Like either do the candidates show up differently in in the UK or Scotland versus Australia and then the US?

SPEAKER_03 29:33

Yes. Yeah, I think in each region we operate in, it has a lot of the core humanities values. And that's being very intentionally driven by us sending a lot of senior leadership over to those to those offices, bringing core team members from those offices to have stints here in Australia. One of our sales reps has actually spent seven months living with me in uh in Manly, which is a totally unique operation, but it has been an incredibly added, beautiful layer to my life and his as well. Um but they have their own flavour, absolutely, their own, their own unique way of operating from a cultural perspective, their own energy and vibe. But there is a there's been a very deep intention to make sure that the culture in each of these regions is truly an extension of what we what we value and how we operate here in Australia. But yeah, absolutely. They have their own nuance.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

And when you think about growth, so growth can come from um your own efforts of putting in a good sales motion, like marketing sales, it can also come from macro um environments as well. It could be a negative one, maybe there's no events due to COVID. It could be that one of your competitors gets acquired or does something that makes the headlines that is um kind of detrimental to their brand in the market. And at times you have to you have to see see something, see where the puck's going, and it may not be going there for very long, and you need to be able to execute quite quickly to um to grab hold of that opportunity. How do you think about balancing like grow quickly and to or scale quickly to grasp hold of that opportunity and not compromise the core values of who you are as an organ as an organization?

SPEAKER_03 31:25

That's a really good question. And it's really nuanced because it depends on the capacity of the team, it depends on where the business is. There's been a lot of times where we saw a huge opportunity, for example, expanding into the US earlier. We were actually planning on expanding into the US before COVID kick started. And COVID actually brought up a bunch of amazing and really challenging situations. And so the ability to transform what is misfortune into opportunity, I think, is something that we've done incredibly well as an organization. So obviously, during COVID as a prime example, we actually went into negative revenue because we were refunding fees on events that couldn't actually occur. And so our CS team, we didn't let go of anybody. Our CS team transitioned into like humanitics therapists for a lot of event organizers that have lost their livelihoods. What this gave us an opportunity to do is that the broader events landscape and our competitors cut 50% of their staff globally, damaged relationships in the industry, and as things then kick-started again, they'd had drains from their organization. It gave us actually the best launching point for us to then start to expand both here in Australia and globally as well. So there's been a few pockets of those types of experiences on the journey where, and maybe this is deeply tied to the model as well, where we can have in these contexts where it doesn't make economic sense to be keeping team members through this period of uncertainty. And in a traditional tech company, it'd be cutting head count, preserving the camp table. But in this structure of a non-profit, it probably gave us a little bit more autonomy to then get to play a bit more of a longer-term game instead of appeasing short-term shareholder value as well.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

I think as Steve Jobs said, you only realised where you got to by looking backwards. And that's a it's a good lesson. Um, and it's it's one which not many corporate leaders have got the privilege of being able to operate by when they're they're run and orchestrated by external um owners as well. Again, touching on the US piece, because it's so impressive. Australian firm going international, going into the US, so many Yeah, that that's the holy grail for a lot of companies, is let's go ahead to the US and yeah, that's the big market, 370 million people. What are the tips that you would give to other Australian founders and go-to-market experts that are or or leaders that are thinking about heading internationally, going to the US? Like, what are the top three tips or like of where someone should start if they aren't looking to expand?

SPEAKER_03 34:19

It's a really good question. It's it's really hard. The US market is tough.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

How did you start? How did you even start into the US? And you you've landed in Denver. Like, how did you choose Denver?

SPEAKER_03 34:34

Denver is a launching point for the US, made a lot of sense. Okay. From a time zone perspective, a the city of Denver had great incentives for this type of model to be brought to Colorado. And honestly, just living in a place that's close to the mountains was a pretty easy sell. If I can't have the ocean, give me some mountain time as well. Yeah. There's also a pretty decent tech scene in Denver with a youth population, and people from the Midwest and California are all moving to Denver as a bit of a pocket to engage in that type of work. The US market's really tough. It's really competitive. People are jaded by being put through sales motions. Um, contact rates are lower when you're talking about cold calling, emailing, etc. I think the biggest thing that we learned, which we learned from other founders, was that you need to have senior leadership there doing the thing, pushing the model, winning the first clients, and building up the motion. Finding an external sales leader that doesn't understand how you operate, and just expecting that they're going to be the ones that are pushing the model uh in the same way that you would is it's that's really tough. So for us, that that made a lot of sense. Um, so I lived in Colorado for for the majority of the last few years. My co-founders, constant time over there, and other sales leaders were were kind of jumping in and out to support the process.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

So, couple, just to replay one is location, where it's is practically makes sense. Secondly, I picked up incentives as well. So certain states are actually going to offer tech incentives. Um, so that that makes total logical sense. Third is like, where do you want to be? Like personally, yeah. For cost of living, I would imagine that Denver's a bit lower than than California as well.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

Absolutely. So that all of that where we ran into the model, and we're looking at do we base ourselves out of New York, out of Austin, out of LA or or somewhere in California? And Denver seemed to be that real sweet spot where there's access to youth talent, the cost of living isn't crazy, and uh central time zone as well as the city incentives. So yeah, you need to you need to figure out what does that kind of look like. For us, we're lucky that we didn't need to be based out of the Bay Area in order to get funding, for example. So it gave us, and based on how we run our operation, so much of our sales motion is cold calling, emailing, and digital meetings. And so having that, the geography uh from an events perspective, it kind of gave us a little bit more flexibility as well.

SPEAKER_02 37:15

And from a um an investment in resources, resources being like the sales team or marketing events, getting your brand out there, like what were the buckets of investment that you put yourself in? Because you you have a a meaningful team in in the States now and they're growing and your business and brand is growing significantly. Like, what did that foundation look like when you started? And I guess reflecting back, would you do anything differently?

SPEAKER_03 37:39

From an investment perspective, we've really globally just pushed the humantics model through like a direct, cold, hard, outbound motion, and then backfilled customer success based on how stretched the team are. So that that has always been a model that has worked really well here in Australia, and that's with the model we deployed in the US and what we've deployed in in the UK as well. And so some of the feedback we got early on in our in our journey was that if you get one of these funnels working, then the tendency can be to be like, well, let's focus on trying to get four different funnels working and really be able to ramp the operation from there. Um what they said was actually what you should do is if you've got one funnel working, just like just run that thing as hard as you can. And sure, tinker with some kind of other other vehicles or funnels along the way. But if you've got something working, then then rinse it to all that you can. And so that's really the process that we've run. The interesting thing about our model is that we sell to event hosts who sell thousands of tickets, and there's all of these intersection points that end consumers have with the product. So despite us selling to one organizer, we actually do have all of these micro touch points with thousands of other additional people through one sales motion. So it creates this, or it gives space to create this flywheel in a in a more effective way.

SPEAKER_02 39:15

And obviously, you just brought Hugh Jackman on as a as a brand ambassador, which is incredible. Aussie, Aussie's taken over the world, but also I imagine um yeah, you're in a position now where you know people like that coming on board is gonna build the snowball or or yeah, give it momentum.

SPEAKER_03 39:34

Yep. Yep. The brand identity is is a key piece, but it's the cold, hard, outbound sales crud which drives the business motion. I think people love to it's easy, right? We let our imaginations run wild. And Hugh Jackman joining is a huge help, helps with the brand identity. He's gonna be helping in more than just being a spokesperson to open doors and drive the humanitics model. Yeah, but that's not gonna be the only thing that gets humanitics to a point where we're donating a hundred million dollars a year. It's all of the information. You still actually gotta pick up the phones, you still need you, yeah. The next after the Hugh Jackman announcement, everyone's celebrated, and then five minutes later, everyone's back on the phones doing the exact same sales motion.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Yeah, yeah. I love it because on one hand, you know, you're such a um a mission-driven cultural focus business, and then on the other hand, you're just like gotta be back on the phones, dialing, smiling and dialing, which is um it just makes you such a unique, a unique business and and culture. Um, where and and also just talks to the fundamentals of business and sales, like hard work, find out what works and double down on that, and don't get distracted by shiny objects as well. What is your leadership philosophy? Um, like what does leadership mean to you? And my next question is gonna be like it what is the next leader that you're gonna have to bring into the business um look like?

SPEAKER_03 40:59

Really good question. That is a really good question. I think my leadership style is that I want to create a space where people can become truly the best versions of themselves. And the path for each person differs radically, and sometimes that requires really challenging and nuanced uh conversations. I mean, you've run a sales process and managed teams, and when you see the potential and see the the baseline talent that somebody has, but then it you know, man must suffer for his both the marble and the sculptor. It takes time and it takes the right conditions and the right pressure to also be able to refine somebody into the person that they fundamentally want to be professionally, but it's it takes time. So I'd love to I love to invest in people deeply, have beautiful and nuanced relationships with them. Our team is super tight and close, and that's a really challenging, particularly from a leadership perspective, when training other leaders. My US team are a prime example where I've built really tight friendships with these people, and that extends far beyond work, but then we have to shift fluidly between what is what is friendship and what is like high performance management culture. How do you do that? Nuanced conversations.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

What's an example of a nuanced conversation? Someone that was you you were out partying with on Friday night, or you were socializing with, is there's been a a performance gap or something has not gone as as it should have to, how do you have that hard conversation?

SPEAKER_03 42:46

I think what underpins everything is trust. And so and and trust is built in so many different ways, but it's built in those micro conversations and and moments, right? And so if something like that, where there's been a gap in performance or there's been a ball that's been dropped, it's like sitting down and like laying the emotional safety blanket and saying, hey, like this is the outcome, just letting you know that this has nothing to do with my deep appreciation for you as a person. But if we're both striving to achieve this or have this type of culture or these types of outcomes, then this is the gap and this is where we need to improve. And so I think so much of that, yeah, it's just built fundamentally on trust and recognizing that we have deep within our culture, we have a few key values that we we we hold internally. And that one of them is uh that we have our first internal value is that you raise things early and directly. And the second thing is that you never assume the worst, you always assume the best of your team. And we what happens is that when those things are embedded and valued. Valued by everybody, then it creates a space to be able to have those types of conversations. And so we don't, we don't tolerate side chat. If somebody has a problem with you and they're talking to me about it, then I'm coaching them on how to address that directly with them. And I think when that happens over like hundreds of these micro conversations throughout an organization, and it really supports being able to have those really challenging, challenging discussions when there is this mismatch with people that you're actually closely with from a personal perspective.

SPEAKER_02 44:35

That's awesome. Yeah. And what I'm taking away there is it's that systemic foundation of trust that you just embed from day one and the air that you breathe as part of the culture is is putting you all in a position that it's you can have tough conversations.

SPEAKER_03 44:53

Yeah. I mean the the devil is in the detail, right? We're we're all human.

SPEAKER_02 44:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:57

And we all are having this human visceral experience and we all have our challenges outside of work. And when you're looking at performance managing sales reps, sure, do they hit quota or not? If they didn't hit quota, you can look to what are the activity metrics that that got them there or didn't get them there. But that's only a piece of the puzzle. And I sometimes you actually realize that I need to actually connect with this person on a deeply human level to understand what's actually going on for them psychologically and in their personal life. And so much of sales coaching isn't actually dealing with their process, but it's like giving them space to actually be able to process what's going on in their personal life and feel like they can work through that in order to then get to their quota or perform at a high level.

SPEAKER_02 45:41

And when you reflect on your own leadership uh journey, and and you've been been fortunate to you know be number one to having 80 in the business today, what are the the gaps that you you may see in your own aptitude or capabilities that you're thinking about for yourself in terms of stretching yourself to the next the next level of James and the next level of humanitics? It's bloody tough.

SPEAKER_03 46:09

I think the drivers for me early days, and maybe it's an innate driver that that uh occurs for a lot of people, particularly into the Salesforce, is that I had a deep drive to prove something to myself, to my parents, to the people around me. And I always subscribed to the idea that I wasn't exceptional, I wasn't intelligent, uh, but what I knew that I could do is actually outwork people. And that those other things were like an uncharitable assessment, um, which I've learnt later on in my life. But this this deep feeling that I need to actually work people off the park. I did it in football, I did it in like tons of different sports, and and with work as well. I knew that I could my a joke, but like my meta skill is the ability to suffer. And that got me to where I needed to get to with humanitics. But there were burn there was burnout along the way. And so that same operating system that I needed to get me from that kind of zero to one place is not the same that is gonna get me from where I am now to then where we need to get to. Um, but it definitely served its purpose for that time being.

SPEAKER_02 47:34

And and if you look to scale, are you because you're right, you need to then step, step up and and bring people on that journey. Are you looking for a mini-version of yourself that can has got that resilience and um aptitude to outwork the competition?

SPEAKER_03 47:51

I think we we love to find other people where we see a small piece of ourselves in them, right? And I don't think we need another me in the organization. I think the team would have some sort of strong aversion to that. But yeah, I think I think some of the core characteristics, absolutely. Yeah, I think people that are deeply driven, they're empathetic, they have strong EQ, a commercial lens, and and a deep value and desire to do good in the world. If we can hit those things, then then amazing. We're in we're in the business of relationships as well. So those are are really core things that's gonna set somebody up for success. So that's absolutely what I would look for. I don't think they need to have all of the level of intensity that I bring to the work dynamic, but maybe maybe a little a little sprinkle.

SPEAKER_02 48:40

Oh, it's funny because I I hired Scott. I'm not sure if you've met Scott for my team, but he is uh 20, 29 years old, and he's done three Iron Men. He'd done two when I met him, and I've done a half Iron Man, and I did a half Iron Man, 126 kilos. I know how tough an Iron Man is. And I thought this if this guy can do two Iron Men at before the age of like 27, 28, like he's a bit crazy. He can, he can, it's I call it Iron Man mentality, left foot, right foot, you just keep going through the pain. Um, and that's something which I think is is um a similar trait when you look at high performance uh you know in in and outside of the workforce, it's it's that app that ability to just keep going and the tenacity to to fight through pain. Um so yeah, it's it's cool to hear your your own version of that because you you guys have got that, I'd say that same trait.

SPEAKER_03 49:35

Yeah, I think I think the reality is we live in a world where so many of your baseline needs are met, and you really need to induce adversity, otherwise you just get so comfortable and complacent. And so doing something that scares you, something that you actually fear uh you can actually fail, I think is that's that's bloody noble. And so doing Iron Man's, I dabbled in running ultras, uh, and those experiences, you kind of you kind of find out that yeah, pain's tolerable and and cool, yeah, things are uncomfortable, but you can keep pushing things.

SPEAKER_02 50:11

It's character building.

SPEAKER_03 50:12

And seriously, character building, and then you and then you take those life experiences, and then picking up a phone and calling somebody is not that bad.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

No, no. I um I jumped into the ice bath last night and it was at 3.4 degrees, and it was the hardest one I'd done in a while. But I just sat there and go, like, no pain, no gain. You just gotta take it. And um and I I do find that it's it's that that mental challenge is is important because it is so easy to opt out of everything today. Yeah, the click of a button, you can opt out, but you're not stretching yourself, you're not growing mentally and and muscle-wise if you if you do do that. I want to start to to transition into a bit of a close. I know we've been here for a while and I've I've really, really enjoyed the conversation. I want to talk about um kind of lessons. We've got um current leaders, aspiring leaders, um, Aussie companies, internationals um in Australia that are listening to this podcast. What are the two to three things that you wish you had someone had told you at the beginning of your career that if you had your time again you would do differently? And that would be your advice to to someone that's that's on this trajectory. They've got this kind of blank-ish canvas ahead of them. And yeah, what are a couple of tips that you would share with your knowledge now?

SPEAKER_03 51:25

The two biggest things that I wish I knew earlier in the journey. One would be don't be afraid to ask. And that's deeply involved in a sales process, but I didn't come from a sales background. I think observing my co-founders, just having in in Yiddish, it's called chutzpah, having the chutzpah to go and just walk up to somebody that's runs events and just strike up a conversation, or you have this friend of a friend of a friend that knows this contact, that knows this other marketing contact and just going for it. And if I knew that earlier on, it would have saved, uh we would have made a whole lot of progress earlier on in the journey. I think the second thing is that I was always deeply I'm always deeply curious on like anthropology and people. And that wasn't intentionally so, but just comes quite naturally to me. That I didn't think that I'd actually be in a place of managing and supporting people in the context that I am. So the advice that I perhaps wish that I received earlier on is being able to build deep trust with people before then being able to like actually shift behavior change is really important. And uh Yeah, I keep using the word nuance. So much of what's really challenging with managing people is understanding who they are, what they want, and building that trust so that they can appreciate that you're actually there to help them on their journey as well.

SPEAKER_02 53:09

I love that. And is there anything on sales, leadership, humanitics I haven't asked you or you would like to share as any closing remarks?

SPEAKER_03 53:19

I think one of the biggest things that we have really refined at Humanitics is that we've gotten very clear with what success looks like and what it doesn't. And that flows through into how we support our clients with account management customer success. It's the standard that we push in engineering, it's the sales motion that we run, and then it's the people that we bring into the organization. And so you're never gonna nail everything all of the time. But if you're really clear with what's really important and what you value, then when people don't fit that mold, then being able to put your hand up and say, hey, I made a bad hiring mistake, or we made a bad sales motion, or or whatever it may be, owning it and then changing it. And the mistake that I've seen other leaders make is this kind of sunk cost fallacy approach, which is, oh, I've got a few sales reps that they may be a decent cultural fit, but they're not quite there yet on their target. And you kind of drag them, and what ends up happening is you create a low-performing culture very quickly if uh if that kind of gets out of whack. So I think for us it's like being very clear with what's what's valuable, what it is that its success looks like, and then being able to hold everybody to that standard. And that also comes from comes from the top, comes from the bottom. Everybody has to buy into that high integrity.

SPEAKER_02 54:50

Amazing. Well, James, I've thoroughly enjoyed a conversation. I always learn something from you, and I'm gonna take a couple of snippets back into my own business, um, particularly around having having conversations with people and how do you create that trust-based environment in order to do that. For those that are listening, we've got a lot of tech businesses here. I would encourage each of you to send the Humanitics mission vision website to your marketing team, to your events team, and ask them to look at this as an alternative to what they're doing today. This is a small piece of the pie where you can deliver an exceptional customer-client experience for the big conferences that you're all going to be running, but also making a meaningful impact to charities around the world. So that's my ask to the audience uh make sure that you you share the good word and let's see if we can um watch and support Humanitix and uh then taking their business and and organization to new heights in 2026 and beyond. So thank you.

SPEAKER_03 55:50

Awesome. Thank you, James. Appreciate it.