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Creator Generation brings you behind the scenes of the creator economy, featuring top YouTubers and experts who share the strategies, lessons, and stories behind building successful channels, growing incredible businesses, and driving the world’s biggest online video successes.
Hey. I'm Fred.
Ant:And I'm Ant.
Fred:And this is Creator Generation.
Ant:Creator Generation of hype.
Fred:One of my favorite YouTube channels of all time is a comedy trio for Melbourne called Auntie Donna. Look. I love their high energy absurd comedy stuff for as long as I can remember. But what's really interesting about these guys isn't the fact that they've stayed relevant for over ten years. It's that they've built an incredible business around their channel called Haven't You Done Well Productions.
Fred:Today, we're chatting with Georgia Mappin, managing director of Haven't You Done Well, who's gonna walk us through how the business actually works and how it looks like a comedy trio for Melbourne has managed to build one of the best companies in the creator economy. Georgia, welcome to Creator Generation.
Georgia:Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.
Fred:When we found out that you there was a potential for you to be the guest, we were we're pretty excited because there are some really interesting questions that I think we've always wanted answered. So it's a good opportunity for us to ask those questions, but also you're really pretty open with answers to questions in the past. So I'm keen to hear what you have to say about them.
Georgia:I am. We're an open book. I love businesses, especially that offer transparency in this market because I find that well, I found that coming up, everyone was very withholding of information, and that doesn't help anyone. And so, like, just being able to give as much information as possible, answer any questions is it's actually one of my favorite things to do. So no topic off limits, guys.
Georgia:Get in there.
Ant:Alright. Changing my questions now. Alright.
Fred:Well, let's start with the with with the first one, obviously. Yeah. Now if you look at the YouTube channel, Arne Donner, three guys making weird videos, know, very lo fi appearance. But obviously, it's done well. You've got a Netflix show, you've got an ABC There's live touring internationally.
Fred:Now a film? What what what's what's going on? What's the background here? What's happening?
Georgia:Yeah. I mean, it's it's, like, funny you say it like that because that is the outside perception. I think it's, like, part of the brand. It's what we give off. But it was never actually three guys just kinda fucking around making funny videos, even though that's kind of, like, how it feels.
Georgia:It's always been a very kind of sophisticated group, which I've always been very impressed by. I've been a fan of them for a very long time, for over ten years now. And they've been together doing it all for, I think, years. And they started and it's obviously the three guys that are front facing performing writers, Broden Mark and Zach. But it's always also had three behind the scenes as part of the core group.
Georgia:There's Max, which is or originally, he was director editor. Now he's just director. And we have Sam, who's head writer, but also live show director. And then we have Tom as well, who's podcast daddy, head of all banger audio tracks that come with the brand, original composer, was in a band himself. And they've been doing it and stayed together and been a group for very a very, very long time.
Georgia:And so it's kind of had a as just as much behind the scenes support as it has in front of the camera. And I think that's always why they've been so successful is because it's not just, you know, a bunch of faces that you see. It's a bunch of background support as well. And, yeah, it's it's always been quite a sophisticated little outfit, which I think is very cool.
Fred:How did you get involved?
Georgia:I've known Max, the director, for, I think, close to ten years. We started together in advertising. So when we got paired together when we worked at an advertising company, I won't name. But when we were little baby, I was a producer, and he was directing, and we were both in house. And I got put on a job.
Georgia:I got put on, like, my first big quarter of $1,000,000 budget commercial for Spirit of Tasmania. And I was told I was like, you're gonna get flown down to Melbourne. You're gonna produce this job. You're get paired up with a director. You've never met him before, here's his number.
Georgia:Give him a buzz. I was like, okay. I called Max. I was like, hi. I'm Georgia.
Georgia:God. I I'm I'm a producer. I'm gonna come down. Like, we should probably chat, get to know each other. And he was like, yeah.
Georgia:Yeah. Like, I'm the in house director and editor. And I was like, cool. Like, what else do you do? We're, like, in our early twenties at this point, and I had a bunch of projects that I had had made on the side, wanted to be in TV long term.
Georgia:So I was very much like, this isn't your only gig. What else is going on? What else do you do? And he was like, oh, I'm in a comedy group. I'm in a comedy group called Auntie Donna.
Georgia:And I was like, are you fucking kidding me? I'm such a huge fan. Like, I've been to all of your Sydney shows when you guys have come up. He was like, really? Like, awesome.
Georgia:Cool. That's great. And I was like, yeah. I'm a massive fan. Like, I did a comedy pilot the same year you guys did Fresh Blood.
Georgia:I did it through a stream called Comedy Runway with SBS and Screen Australia, and they did Fresh Blood, which was with ABC and, I think, Screen Australia as well. And then we started working together. We started making ads together. And every kind of company I went to, I brought Max in. We kept our relationship going for a long time and just stayed a big fan as well.
Georgia:And then when I was working for a company, a toy company, I was over in The States. Max was over there. They had announced their Netflix show. And was I like, let's go get dinner. And he was telling me all about the Netflix show, and I was making toy ads, and we were just, like, catching up.
Georgia:And then the world shut down, and I had to fly home on a on a in a mask right before the borders shut, and then they did too. And they came back, and then, obviously, the Netflix show got released. And I think a couple of months later, Max called me, and he was like, hey. We just got another show commissioned. And this time, we don't wanna just focus on the show.
Georgia:We wanna really round out the long term goal, which is building out a production company, but none of us wanna do that. And I know you've always wanted to do it and do it with us and and kind of, like, execute the big vision that you've always had for having your own production company. Do you wanna come in and chat to us? And I was like, literally, yes. My dream job.
Georgia:Pretty sure I manifested this and came in, did two rounds of interviews, and that was four and a half years ago.
Fred:Nice.
Georgia:So jumped in pretty blind to a production company that didn't even have a couch. You know? It had a very tiny office in a shared space, and we had to make a TV show, and we were in the middle of production for a web series. And I just kind of ran with it. And then yeah.
Georgia:And, yeah, four and a half years later, it's really nice to say that we have our first feature film, and we've got other shows, and we've got a streaming platform. And we have so much going on all the time, and it's fucking fun and awesome.
Ant:I've got two two two questions that come off this. One is much more important than the other, and the I'll I'll go with the most important one. Yep. Because it's a unknown secret for production company success. How like, how important is the couch?
Georgia:Well, I guess coming from someone that now in the office has, I think, too many couches, I would say I invested too hard in the couch aspect of everything unless so in the other infrastructure required. We have just gotten our first office. We've been here for two months, but we we have about seven couches, and I think I need to get rid of some.
Ant:So somewhere between so zero is not the right answer, and seven is too many.
Georgia:Yeah. Exactly. Somewhere in the middle. I haven't worked it out yet.
Ant:Somewhere in the middle. The other thing the the other side of this is then, like, you know, you you said this was your dream job. You you you, like, manifested it, but you're kinda like, actually, don't know what I'm doing. And this was sorry. Something like that has been probably not entirely true that you didn't know exactly what you're doing.
Georgia:I still don't know what I'm
Fred:doing. But,
Ant:you know, four and a half well, you know, five years ago, let's give it that. It it was all very new. Like, how did you know this was the right thing?
Georgia:I don't know. That's a really good question. I don't think I did. I I I think I knew that I I always knew that I was very entrepreneurial in nature. I always knew that I wanted my own production company.
Georgia:I always knew that I wanted to be in long form, and I always knew I had a brilliant relationship with Max. We balanced each other out really well. And all of those things, I think, still very present and and what I look at as my why. Not so much being like, oh, this is it. This is this is the right thing because all the stars have aligned.
Georgia:It's just more just it's it's a vibe. It feels great. If the relationship with the rest of the boys wasn't great, it wouldn't have been the fit. But we're all such good friends, and we have such a great connection, and we're all completely different personalities. And sometimes we argue like, there's seven of us that own this whole ecosystem, and our board meetings are not what you'd expect.
Georgia:A lot of people are like, oh, I can't imagine the boys in a board meeting and you presenting to them like, is it chaos? And I'm like, not really. It's pretty boring. Like, it's pretty straight down the line board meeting, what
Fred:you
Georgia:would expect any other company to do. It's just sometimes we've got some rude little jokes in there, and we keep it pretty light. Sometimes we fight. Sometimes we laugh. But it's a pretty normal structure.
Georgia:So it wasn't so much about, yeah, I think going, oh, this is it. This is right. It's it's been an evolving process. I'd say now at the four and a half, five year mark, I am very much like, this is the rest of my career as long as I'm allowed to do it and and finding success in it.
Fred:When while we talk about it, when with the brand, the Arne Donner brand, where where did that come from? I think a lot of people have that question. Like, Arne Donner, it's an odd name. Yeah. What's the background?
Georgia:The I mean, the name, I still don't know. I'm pretty sure one of them told me once when I was drunk, I don't remember. And I always think it's funny because we get mass messages from people in another country because there isn't another auntie Donna influencer. Oh. We get messages going, oh, auntie Donna, like, I need help.
Georgia:Auntie, auntie and it's like, oh, that's not this Auntie Donna. Very different. Like, I think she's like a religious support person. And we get confused with that quite a bit. And I'm like, that's not us.
Georgia:But the whole brand of it all stemmed from, obviously, those six boys. Like, I had no part in building Auntie Donna into what it is now. I've always been in awe of how they approach building that brand. Like, I do genuinely think they are some of the smartest business people I've ever met, even if it was unintentional success. The the take that they've always had on the diversification of the brand and the platform agnosticism is something that I've only just re emulated through and expanded upon through Haven't You Done More Productions and Grouse House.
Georgia:They when they started Auntie Donna, they realized like, they're all drama professionally drama trained actors. Like, you wouldn't you kinda wouldn't think that, but they're all professionally trained actors. They come from theater. They're very live focused and live driven. When they started, it was always about the live shows the live show element.
Georgia:YouTube only came into play because it was coming up at that time, and they realized if they if they uploaded things to YouTube, they could sell more live tickets. And when that pipeline started to show results and returns, they were like, alright. That's sick. We should do YouTube as well. YouTube went surprisingly well.
Georgia:And then they had their first big hit was Bikey Wars of the Fresh Blood, I'm pretty sure. Then from there, they started doing both concurrently. And it wasn't until they went to VidCon, the year that the Suicide Forest stuff happened with one of the Paul brothers. I can't remember which one. And in that moment, it was very obvious that people's lives were getting impacted by this one person's very big mistake, obviously.
Georgia:But it had such a huge ripple effect that all these advertisers were pulling out of YouTube and people were starting to lose their income. And then from then on, they were like, actually, we can't just define ourselves as YouTubers, even though we're having a lot of success on the YouTube side of things. We can't build our house in someone else's backyard because we don't have any control over that land. And that was kind of the moment they were like, all we're going agnostic. We're not over kind of like putting our eggs in one basket into one stream.
Georgia:We don't want to be labeled as YouTubers. And I think that's the biggest difference. It's like, yes, we have success on YouTube, and YouTube is where we find audience. It's where we sustain audience. But it's not that's like one seventh of how the brand operates and creates revenue long term.
Georgia:So, like, you know, you wouldn't think that a YouTuber would have, you know, a best selling children's book, but they do. They have two now. But from there, that was like, alright. Okay. Podcast.
Georgia:Let's do the podcast. And then that grew into, like, this massive kind of, like, tier one organically grown podcast with a huge following. It doesn't earn much money, but it sustains an audience with weekly uploads and weekly entertainment. And then they still do the live side of things. They you know, World Tour is massive every time we do it.
Georgia:They're a huge investment of time. And they went in, pitched to Netflix, got a show. They had two pilots before the Netflix show as well, so there were always plans to try and get a TV show long term, but they hadn't eventuated yet. And even though the film that we're making isn't an Auntie Donna film, all a lot of the reason why we've gotten that up and how we've gotten that up has been because of the success of being able to drive audiences across all of these different mediums and streams. So, yeah, it was a really smart way that they built that brand that could jump across different mediums and not defining yourself by your medium, I think, is one of the smartest plays of this economy and this industry and this subset of, I think, what creators and producers differentiate with from long form into this new way of building business.
Fred:You mentioned quite a few things there as part of that revenue mix. Could you just maybe just list them out sequentially? What do you have? Like how did it grow? What came first?
Fred:What came next? What came next? And what that mix looks like just in a shell?
Georgia:Yeah. Donna, it was live first and then YouTube obviously started creating revenue there, and then all the other kind of social platforms at the time. So Instagram, Facebook was pretty big. And then since then, TikTok is is a big part of the digital ecosystem that we have. We have then the podcast, which is something like half a million listens a month.
Georgia:So pretty huge scale on the podcast side of things. We have done two books now, and then they were they're, like, pretty ad hoc. They're not, like, recurring revenue or part of the long term ecosystem, but built a great partnership with Penguin, turned one of our sketches into a children's Christmas book, Always Room for Christmas Pood. And that went really, really well. It's still one of our bestsellers on the merch side of things.
Georgia:Merch is another one. And that kind of has its own recurring side of the business, like month to month through our ecom store, but then also has a big jump through the touring merch as well. So when we go on tour, we have a big line item for the merch side of things. And then we also have Patreon, so behind the paywall. That has six and a half thousand paid subscribers, which is it's quite a it's the second biggest revenue stream for the Donna brand.
Georgia:I think it brings in between 800 to 1,000,000 a year. And that fluctuates, obviously, depending on the content that we put up. I think that's all of them. And then we have our bigger projects, you know, like the TV shows. They're not huge revenue generators in terms of the time versus return, but then they go and build and really increase that audience reach, especially Netflix show.
Georgia:The you go into the YouTube channel and look in the background of when the show released and audience doubled. So it went from yeah. It, like, literally increased by 50%. So everything works as an ecosystem, and we don't look at any one of those streams as higher than the others. It's like a no hierarchy kind of operation, because if we over invest in one of them, then any or all of the others get neglected, and all the others have their value in the system and how it operates.
Ant:Tell us about haven't you done well productions then. Like, we've sort of talked about mentioned it a few times, but there's Auntie Donna. There's haven't you done well? There's mentioned Grouse House as well. So maybe can you, like, explain what's going on here?
Georgia:Yes. I can. It's an ecosystem with that kind of holds within it three ecosystems, I guess. So we have Auntie Donna, which I like to say is like the grandfather brand. That's the audience.
Georgia:We've proven that our taste in comedy and our style of comedy has audience, and it has a very engaged audience. And that model as well, the platform agnostic brand that can live and exist anywhere our audience wants to engage with it, is the core DNA of where we've kind of built Haven't You Done Well around and then Grouse House TV. So Haven't You Done Well was started by Auntie Donna, and it was started with a nod to, I think, changing the standards of the way that creators are treated within television and film in the traditional industry. I think there were many instances for them coming up where they had their IP either taken or unfairly distributed, where it was weighted towards the producer and not towards them. I know that there was one time where there was, like, a production deal where someone wanted to own the characters of Mark Zak and Broden, their actual names.
Georgia:And it was just, like, never fair. And so Haven't You Done Well was really, like, ethically minded, creator first, creator owned, creator led at the start. And I mean, it still is, hopefully. Like, that's how people perceive us. Like, we do our creator deals, especially when we're optioning either a TV show or a film or a project.
Georgia:And we, I think, and hopefully, have the highest percentages of ownership given towards our creators that we partner with. Like, our standard is usually fiftyfifty, and industry standard is like 10% to 20% towards the creator. So ours is like really high, and we love that. And ours is high because we don't rely on that, you know, long term kind of tail revenue of a long form project as our only source of income, whereas a lot of traditional production companies do. So we were kind of working out what we wanted Haven't You Done Well to be in the market.
Georgia:And every time we talked about it, nothing no one thing felt right. So it was, you know, Tom in one ear going, we've had a really successful podcast for the last five years. Obviously, we should be a podcast production company. And I had Max going, like, I wanna make a movie. Like, I wanna be a film director.
Georgia:Like, we can't just do that if we're doing podcasts. And then it's like, well, we've had two TV shows, and I wanna make TV shows. So, obviously, we would do TV shows. And then it's like, yeah. But what about online guys?
Georgia:Like, we've got all this stuff online. And I was just like, I can't be I can't turn this brand into a traditional production company in the way that the industry usually operates within. So often traditionally, a production company is defined not by its genre, but by its medium and its output. So it's like, we do film. We're a film production company.
Georgia:We do doco. We do rom coms. We do comedy. We do drama. We do sci fi.
Georgia:We do every single genre, but we do film. And I just it just didn't sit right for us, obviously, with the goals that everyone had. And I was like, okay. Well, we're not gonna do it that way. We're we're not gonna define ourselves by our medium and how we output and how we connect to audience.
Georgia:We're gonna define ourselves by our genre. Our genre is comedy. So Haven't You Done Well operates on every single medium with no no hierarchy. We do film. We do television.
Georgia:We do online. We do live. We do podcasts, and we do commercial. And all of that comes together through the kind of core thread of the fact that we only do comedy. So we can do a a a comedy doco, or we could do a rom com, but we're not doing pure genre outside of the comedic landscape.
Georgia:And then when we kind of worked that out and that felt really right for us, we were like, alright, but don't we want to just do general generic comedy either. That's not where we found audience and success. And what would our audience want to watch if we were going to make a film or if we were going to make more TV? And so that's where we kind of, like, aligned with comedy with a point of difference. It's not something that you probably will see on any commercial network.
Georgia:I don't even know any of the commissioners at all the commercial networks. Because I read an article once where I think the head of commissioning at Channel nine was like, we make we like to commission roast chook TV because everyone likes roast chook. And it gave me the hick. I was like, because I don't wanna make that. Like, that's not I don't wanna make roast chook TV just to get a TV show up.
Georgia:I wanna make something that reflects us and our brand, and it's usually not for everyone, our stuff. So getting getting there, we were like, okay. We're gonna make all of that stuff. Tom, you're gonna be head of podcasts and live. I'll kind of take on TV.
Georgia:Max, you'll be film, and then we'll kind of work everything else out as we go. And that was yeah. That was obviously four and a half years ago. And oh, the other thing was we didn't wanna lock our creative mindset into just Auntie Donna. We were like, we wanna work with other Australian comedians and creatives and try and help get their projects up and and use our success in the market to go and support other comedians as well because there's not enough weird, funny shit out there, and there's very little opportunities and so much talent in this country.
Georgia:So we opened up the brand to collaborate with other writers and creators, and and that's kind of how we operate with Haven't You Done World Productions.
Fred:It's interesting what you're talking about, how important those ecosystems are and how you work across so many, and you have these different production companies to work in different ways. Given that you've sort of bridged both worlds, what do you think of that statement people typically are saying a lot now? Well, hey, traditional media is dying. Creator economy is on the rise. You know, that's the future.
Fred:What does that does that make sense to you? Is that true?
Georgia:I I don't think I agree with it. I don't think traditional will die. I think there will always be room for it. I don't think we'll ever be able to compete. I mean, like, we did just release a a Marvel parody, Dark Phoenix parody, which, you know, goes for a full hour.
Georgia:But that and we did that on, like, a couple of grand. We're never gonna be able to commission a film for $3,000,000 no matter how big our streaming platform gets, no matter how big our Patreon gets, we're never going to invest millions of dollars into, I think, a really high budget premium scripted series or film. We're always going to need a traditional landscape that can come in with that scale and tap into us. What I do think is the more laid back TV and, like, the less premium stuff will kind of contract more and more, and that's where I think the creator economy will replace it. Because I think we all know, like, I don't I think, you know, ten years ago when I was watching TV, I would just flick something on and be like, oh, it was kinda interesting.
Georgia:Half watch it. And it's probably like an entertainment series about something random that I don't really care about or it's a cooking show or whatever, that to me is that's the system that's gonna get replaced. It's the it's the cheaper premium stuff. Because now I don't watch now I don't go flick on any broadcast channel and go, oh, something will get served to me. That's not how I engage with entertainment.
Georgia:I go to YouTube, and I go, I'm gonna find something that I know is gonna satiate me, even if it is a bit laid back, even if it is a bit lo fi. I'm gonna go watch my favorite cooking person make a cooking video, not a cooking show that is hosted by someone who won MasterChef twenty years ago. I'm gonna go and find the person that I like that fits my exact niche of how I like to consume cooking media. And so I think that's the segment of the traditional industry that's gonna kind of get taken over by the creative space. Think it already is, to be honest.
Georgia:Yeah. But I think we'll always kind of see, I think there was like a really specific look at the industry, which, you know, I work really hard to try and change the perception of, but it was like, oh, online and digital is a stepping stone to long form. And I absolutely see that as a very, very valid and valuable pathway. You look at Backrooms. You look at Obsession.
Georgia:You look at Together. You look at Talk To Me. You look at all those, and you go abso fucking lutely stepping stone into major long form success. But I think the other side of it, which isn't recognized enough, is that it's also its own self sustaining ecosystem that doesn't actually need long form to be successful. And I think that's a lot of like what I'm trying to scream from the rooftops, is that it's not just a setting zone it can be, and that's very valuable, but there is an absolutely even more valuable pathway, which is showcasing how it can exist entirely on its own.
Georgia:And it doesn't actually need the traditional space to be successful or exist. And I think, you know, like, we're an example of that. We do both. Like, we exist in online, and we exist in an ecosystem that is sustained through online, but we also like to leverage and play in that traditional space just as much because of just the individual needs and wants. And, you know, I love TV, I've always wanted to make TV, Max has always wanted to make a film.
Georgia:And so that's why we're doing it, not because we see it as the only way to be successful.
Ant:Hundred percent second everything you say there. There doesn't need to be a graduation moment from online. Like, I think everyone working and living in the online space has known that forever. The traditional industry is maybe still a little bit behind that. Wanna ask you though, like, you know, we finally, we're starting to get this, like, willingness of convergence, right, between traditional and online.
Ant:Like, Fred and I thought that was gonna come much, much earlier. We've been at this game, I think, eleven years, and I think we were kinda like, yeah, about three years, you know, it'll take. You know? So and it's still only coming now. And it's it's it's coming probably through, like, force.
Ant:Right? It's, like, you know, absolute need. But why do you think it's taken so long for both sides of, like, the creator space, but also the traditional legacy media to come together?
Georgia:Oh, I have no fucking clue, but it frustrates me all the time because it's, like, genuinely, like, I look at and I talk to distributors all the time, especially in film. And I'm like, your whole gig is audience. Right? It's, like, getting audience, getting them marketed to correctly, and getting their bums on seats and buying tickets. And all of these people who are, like, rip roaring, ready to go and have done their ten thousand hours fucking mastered the art of filmmaking through YouTube are perceived as, like, this lower entity, and I don't get it.
Georgia:Like, I've spoken to people and been like, we have sold hundreds of thousands of tickets worldwide to our live shows. Right? Hundreds of thousands of tickets over ten years. We have mobilized and gotten bums on seats. We've literally done the whole goal that you set out to do with every single project you have.
Georgia:We have gotten people to buy and spend a lot of money on tickets and get them to see a show. And I'm talking to you right now, and they're like, Yeah, but, like, have you made a short film that's won a bunch of awards at short film festivals? Like, where is that? Where is that validation? And I'm like, I I don't need that validation.
Georgia:How about the, you know, millions of people that subscribe to us? Is that not enough of a validation for you? And so, like, I don't get it. I do think it's, like, an outdated perception that YouTube is just this Oh, it's like this fad. It'll go away.
Georgia:And it's only shifted, I think, because of, like, a few really kind of, like, forward focused people in the industry that have proven that success can happen from it. I met with Causeway Films last week or yeah, no, last week, they reached out because they're big fans of Shadow Man and Grouse House and so flattered and so amazing to have a company like that who made Babadook and every single amazing horror that we've seen come out of Australia in the last few years, like, talk to me and bring her back. I literally thanked them in that meeting going like, thank you. Like, because of you, I think we have our feature film now. Because you guys took a chance on the Philippi brothers, which were very different to any kind of I don't know if you've seen their content.
Georgia:Okay. Like, I remember when it was announced that they were working together. Was like, how fun the cause by working with those boys? Like, you know, obviously very talented, very chaotic, though. And it was not a partnership I ever expected.
Georgia:But they, like, really went out on a limb and took a chance on them and then showed how much success that you can create from taking a risk like that. Not just them, but obviously, like Michael Shanks as well, we've together. And then you see, obviously, Backrooms and you see Obsession. And it's like now I think the door that's been knocked on for ten years has finally flung open. And I I really wanna see, and I'm really excited to now see all of what will come from that.
Georgia:And hopefully, it's not just horror. You know? Like, hopefully, it's like, see, alright, we've proven horror makes it work. Now what other genres? You know?
Georgia:Like, comedy. Hopefully, fingers crossed, next year.
Ant:Unhinged Aussie comedy all over the world.
Georgia:Exactly. Exactly. We'll see.
Fred:I guess now that a lot more traditional media practitioners you got a you got a you got a name for them. Right? You said it the other day. Called them what do you call them? Tradcos.
Ant:Tradcos. I thought you said I thought you called them trad hose for a second.
Georgia:Woah. No. Like and that's not meant to, like, sound derogatory even though it does. But, like
Ant:Trad codes.
Georgia:Yeah. I call them Trad codes.
Fred:Yeah. If if Trad codes, they wanna enter the creator economy. Obviously, there's a of interest. Right? Yeah.
Fred:You know, they're making things in a sort of very old structure. There's a lot of viewership and audience attention in the creator space. Obviously they want to be part of that. And I think there's a lot of value in things they can offer. You know, their directors and writers and producers, they all have really valuable skills.
Fred:How do they work in the creator economy? What do they do to enter the space to work with creators or the creator economy?
Georgia:I mean, I think it's like genuinely how they've always done it. I think it's just like changing their own perception. It's always been traditionally like someone will come in with a film, a script, and they'll go to a production company, they'll go, What do you think of this? Can you get it made? It's the same kind of thing.
Georgia:It's actually like I would say in that partnership, it's less looking to audience. It's more looking to expertise and how long they've been doing it and how good they are at what they do. I think anytime you kind of go in and you go, Oh, I'm going to leverage this audience, and I'm going to get a million dollars because they've got a million subscribers, I think you're looking at it the wrong way. I think it's very like one plus one equals two. It's very binary.
Georgia:It shouldn't be that. It should have it should have just as much to do with how good of a creator and filmmaker they are. And you should be looking at them in terms of their skill set. Because I think after after Talk To Me came out, I think there was, like, a big, oh, well, obviously, they've got millions of subscribers. It's gonna do really well.
Georgia:It did do really well, but I think the sentiment was it wasn't translated because of the subscriber count. It was because of how good the film And that was the metric that created the success. It wasn't because they had millions of subscribers already. I think that proves that they're very good at what they do and that they'll be able to connect with an audience. But if you think about Rakaraka's situation, like, they they were comedy.
Georgia:Like, they were very weird comedy. There was obviously a lot of sick VFX that they did, but that audience that they built on the YouTube channel was comedic and wanting that. And, of course, that probably wouldn't directly translate into horror fans. It'll get some of them for sure, but it wouldn't be a direct translation. So I think more of what the interesting part of partnering with them was was that they had probably been very self taught, that they had very cool filmmaking skills.
Georgia:You watch those videos, and the fight scenes are so well choreographed and so well shot. And then you think it was probably a bunch of 20 year olds in a room creating that. I think that's what should get looked at by traditional producers. How good of a filmmaker have they taught themselves to be, but without the validation of a traditional kind of film circuit or awards circuit. Michael Shanks as well, He's self taught VFX and has built his YouTube channel on just the craziest, coolest visuals.
Georgia:And I think that's the that's the part that I think probably got looked at, at least by, like, Mike Cowapp, who is his producer, that translated really, really well into Together. It wasn't because his audience established were big horror fans, because, again, his channel was very comedic. It was the weirdness of the VFX, and then that was, like, such a core part of what the feature film was, all of the body merging and all of that. And I think that's the translation point, not the fact that he has an audience that will go see the movie. I think that is just like an indicator that this person can create something that resonates.
Georgia:It's the talent and the skill set that people should be looking at, especially traditional production companies.
Fred:Nice. You know, a lot of creators, and Ant will probably back me up here, have a dream of creating a film or creating to be big like a TV show. And often when you look at the numbers, it sort of pales a comparison to some of the other revenue sources they have. But as you just said, it can be worthwhile. Can you just maybe tell us a bit more about that?
Fred:Obviously you've done Netflix, you've done TV, you've got film coming out. How does that compare to the other revenue sources? You were talking about 800,000 or 1,000,000 in revenue from Patreon. So how does it compare?
Georgia:Yeah. I mean, you compare that as well to like a live tour, and that's more than 1,000,000. It doesn't really compare. It kind of pales in comparison in terms of the financial return. But I think the best way to look at an ecosystem is not just weighing up success based on financial metrics.
Georgia:It's kind of it's it's a bit vanity. It's like the vanity metrics when we're talking about views versus subscribers and, like, the conversion of that. Like, for us, I think we dedicated over a year to making the TV show, the ABC show, also the Netflix show. That was a couple of years because it took a long time to really lock in the deal. But the Netflix the ABC show was a year of our time, and that was, like, full company resource at the time.
Georgia:We were much smaller. We only had, like, two or three employees, and now we're at 20. So back then, it was it was everything that we were doing. And then it came out, and the first night of views I remember there was, and I don't think we realized it at the time, but Netflix was a global deal. So it got distributed globally night one.
Georgia:It went to every country. And when you do TV normally, especially when it's a local commission, it's just shown locally. And then afterwards, it's sold to different territories and markets. So that's when more eyeballs are exposed to it. So we had this global deal as like a baseline of comparison, and the audience doubled.
Georgia:We did a year's worth of work on the ABC show, really proud of the ABC show. And we're sitting there the next morning going, alright. We've now uploaded a a sketch as well to promote the ABC show. The first episode's just aired. I wonder what our numbers are gonna be.
Georgia:The sketch is at, like, a 100,000 views, which is great. Okay. What have we done? And we get our we get our first night of views in, and it's like 20,000 people have watched it. That's amazing.
Georgia:And we were like, is it? Is it that is that amazing? And the ABC were like, fuck. Yeah. That's amazing.
Georgia:And we were like, I don't think that's amazing. That doesn't feel amazing. And and we were just directly comparing it to one, that global reach that happens when you've got a global deal in place. But, also, like, when you upload to YouTube, that's also global. And we had a global audience and global eyeballs on that, But we made a show.
Georgia:We spent a year of our time doing it, and it was only getting shown to Australia. And and I think that's the thing that we kind of overlooked whilst we were working out whether it was, like, a good investment or not. I don't even think we really asked. We were just like, oh, another TV show. That'll double the audience.
Georgia:That'll do this. But in the end, we, I think, undersold how much we should have earned from that, especially when it was a year investment, and then also overestimated how much it would build the brand. Mhmm. And whilst Netflix had a great amount of growth for the brand come from it, the ABC show didn't as much. But, also, silver lining of it all, it was our first independently produced production for the company.
Georgia:So it's Haven't You Done World's first ever TV show. We did the Netflix show as a co production with Ed Helms' production company in the in The States. So, like, that was never our own. And then, obviously, off the back of that, we had just released a web series. We had a great relationship with ABC from the TV show, and then we sold another show into them.
Georgia:And that was our first non Auntie Donna IP show as well. So we did a web series. We launched it on our second platform, which is Grouse House, and then used that as a proof of concept to sell it in as, like, a long form TV show, we got that commissioned. It then subsequently got cancelled, but I won't go into that. But it was still, you know, a feather in the cap because in our first year of really operating as Haven't You Done Well productions, we had made a TV show and sold another, and that was pretty exciting.
Georgia:And that was one of the moments we were like, okay. Like, TV can be a stream for us. Like, we've proven it. It can work.
Ant:I love that you figured out a way to understand, like, there's different levels of success. Like, the success might not have been the views, but you've built something in the company that, like, like, I think that's a really interesting thing to point out. Curious, though, now that you've gone through all of these, you know, different opportunities for the first time, and and you obviously have learned from that. Like, how do you make a decision, and how can someone else make, like, you know, overlay this as well listening? Because you've got all of these different things.
Ant:There's YouTube. There's live. There's Patreon. There's TV, film. There's a there's a lot of different things going on.
Ant:And then how do you then assess or make a decision on something new that's gonna take time and energy and effort? Have you got a decision making framework now that Yeah.
Georgia:Yeah. We do. When when I first started, the It was very much There was the hierarchy at play. It was like, Okay, we've got a TV show now. It's like, This is the big thing.
Georgia:This is the big leagues. It's, you know, so it's like, Okay, we're going to focus all of our energies on the TV show. And then when it came out, we realized we had neglected the YouTube channel, the Patreon. We I think I don't know if we skipped anything podcast because that's always going, but there was a bit of that hierarchy energy in. And so moving forward, we were like, okay.
Georgia:We MVP this now. We don't actually go in and neglect any other sides of the business. We don't have a hierarchy. Everything still has to be looked after. Every stream, every kind of point of contact with our audience still needs to be fulfilled even if we're doing something else.
Georgia:So what does that look like? So for us, it's like, alright. If we're looking at next year's plan, I mean, we plan to almost two years in advance, but we are like, our schedule is our biggest beast. So we go, alright. If we launch or releasing one hero sketch every single month for the next year or two years, that means we have to create 24 sketches.
Georgia:That means we need, you know, we broke it out into blocks of writing and then shooting. And we also need to do two years of Patreon, and we also need to do over 100 podcast episodes. And so it kinda just came down to a mathematical equation. What does that look like in terms of time? There are, like, minimum kind of outputs that we will always have going.
Georgia:How do we provide for that, but then still give ourselves twelve months to do a world tour or twelve months to do a TV show? So that's where the scheduling really, like, comes into play and becomes the most important thing. So we plan it out. We do blocks of writing and shooting. We bank them, essentially.
Georgia:There's, like, a meme with the audience, and it's like we joke about banking them, but like we do bank them. And we have to, to be able to commit to all of the other projects that we're doing all at once. And that was even before all the guys started doing their own individual projects as well. You know, Broden has well, he had his footy podcast, and Zach's been doing his own show with Alexei called Refuse Classification and also his own live show. Broden did his own live show.
Georgia:Mark just released Shadowman, which he's been working on for a year, and it's amazingly detailed and multi platform and absolute brilliant artistic chaos. And a lot of that was from the guys wanting it. It was like, we don't want to just be constantly churning because we have to. It was like, we really want to intentionally enter the year and find space for us to fulfil our creative needs individually as well as for this brand. And, you know, it's the same with Max's feature film.
Georgia:Sam's got a feature film as well that he's been writing. Tom has his own podcast empire now because that was what he wanted. He's got five podcasts under his belt and under the grass house network. So I like to really, like, focus on not just where the guys find their fulfillment, but also where all of our team members find their most fulfillment and really kind of look at how the business can work for the people, not just how the people can work best for the business. And I think that's where we find a lot of, like, our best results.
Georgia:And it's just like, you know, it's a balance. It's hard, but I would rather kind of work harder and then have people feel really fulfilled than, you know, going, well, no, this is the easiest way to do it, and people not be bought in or happy or feeling great.
Fred:It feels like a lot of your success has come from the fact that your team is so diverse and you've got these people working in the different roles to to to build something valuable. On the flip side, you know, it's still the brand is still often there's a strong element of that comedy trio, you know, like it or or not in the middle. What happens if the boys wanna do something else? You've you've just mentioned, like, they wanna you know, they're doing different things at the moment. What happens if they wanna go off and say, hey.
Fred:This is not for us anymore. What happens to the empire?
Georgia:They're not allowed. We don't know. We still haven't done our shareholders' agreement. No. I think a lot of us are just resting on.
Georgia:We're like, what else would they do? It's like, please don't do that. I got really good advice from Andy Lee one day. Obviously, Andy from Hamish and Andy, he had I think it was Radio Karate was their production company. I remember talking to him about how hard it was to balance the needs of the brand, the needs of the people, and the needs of the owners and what they wanted and where they, I guess, like, saw their future.
Georgia:And he was he told me, he was like, you need to mandate that everybody and every project goes through the company. Otherwise, resentment will build and you'll break up. You know, that's what they said. And I sat there and I was like, Wow, Andy Lee, you're so famous and handsome. I should take this on and listen to everything that you're saying.
Georgia:And then I went home, and I was like, it just doesn't feel right. Like, the idea of mandating people to work with the company and the infrastructure that we've built. And I didn't I didn't do it that way. I was like, my gut says people should wanna work with us, and they should wanna bring their projects internally because we're the best. We're the best in the biz.
Georgia:We're the best outside of the fact that, you know, our guys own it. They should wanna work with Haven't You Done World Productions because we are the best and most ethical and awesome to work with in the industry. I feel like that want and that goal goes directly against mandating people to have to bring their project through the company. So I didn't do it. I just said to the guys, like, obviously, it's better for everyone if you've got a project, and you bring it through your own company.
Georgia:And we'll make it work if it does, whatever it is. And it took a bit of time for that kind of trust to build as well as that infrastructure to be there and as well as, like, talking about the benefits of everything before it became, I think, a bit more automated that, you know, every kind of individual thing would come through. But now it happens, and it happens, at least, like, in the way that I know, because people do have that feeling. They want to do it through having you done more productions. Not it's not that they have to do it through Haven't You Done More Productions.
Georgia:So it's it's the the balance is there, and it's always a challenge. But it's great to have everyone here and seeing people here. And, like, they do projects outside of it. Like, you know, Broden's in a million different TV shows that aren't produced by us. Like, we don't make Fisk.
Georgia:We don't make Colin from accounts, and he's in those shows. And it's the same with commercial. Commercial is a big revenue stream for having know, well productions, and and burns in a bunch of ads that we haven't made. But, yeah, it always works better when everyone's internally operating within the system, but it feels better when it's they're here because they wanna be here.
Ant:Good point.
Fred:Hey, we're wrap up soon, but I wanted to ask you a couple of things around revenue, because I know whenever we talk about the space, especially to tradcos, they ask, Hey, what does the money look like? That was always the first question we got asked even early in our career and working in this space. Can I ask about a couple of areas and you can give me some, maybe some general figures about what revenue might look like in a year around that?
Georgia:Absolutely. I mean, if I wasn't so end of financial year out, I'd pull up my presentation for you and tell you the exact dollar amount. But go, hit me.
Fred:First one, just YouTube ad revenue. What does that look like in a year?
Georgia:For Donna, about $50,000 a year on average, between 45 and 50, depending on kind of what we're uploading. But it's, like, average, that's kind of where we land every single year. And for Grouse House, we've just hit $30,000.
Fred:Nice. Okay. What about Patreon and memberships?
Georgia:Oh, that one's great. That one is between 800 and a million depending on the year and what we're outputting. Like, I think we have big spikes when we tap into subgenres. So, like, when we do something that's like D and D, we get a huge influx of, like, D and D fans to come in. We did it with Star Trek.
Georgia:We've just had a bunch of, like, new stuff with Marvel, and we're we're playing with the idea of, like, outputting our really, like, kind of high production value content onto the open channel, which is the YouTube, and then doing extra stuff that directly connects to that behind the paywall. But I think it's always fluctuating what audiences are looking to pay for. But, yeah, that $1,608 $100,000 in a year.
Fred:Live touring?
Georgia:Fucking millions, babe. Bloody millions. Between one and two million dollars in profit. It does take a year, though. But when you look at what
Fred:we made in the and 2,000,000 in profit, you said?
Georgia:Yeah. It's after. That's, like, what we invoice. Yeah. I mean, that's how we pay for grasshoots at the moment.
Georgia:Till grasshoots become self sustaining, that's what the two of us pay for. Wow. But yeah. But that takes a year out of the schedule. So we have to, like, plan all of our content two years in advance for a tour to happen.
Georgia:And whilst it makes a huge amount of money, it is a massive endeavor. It takes a lot out of the boys. You know? They're not the spring chickens they used to be when they started out. You know?
Georgia:They're in their mid to late thirties now. They're all coming dads. It's not as easy to just go on the road and tour around the world for a good six months straight. Like, genuinely, Tom has two kids. Yeah.
Georgia:And Mark's about to have his first baby, and Broden got really bad sciatica at the end of the last hour and couldn't walk for two weeks. Like, I'm smiling, it's like, no, it's horrific. It's so hard on the body, the mind, the soul. It's really full on. So it's not something we like to go and rely on as a way to support the rest of the business.
Georgia:If anything, we're pulling away from it, and they're not touring for a while because of how hard the last one was.
Fred:And then finally, and you can give me a range for this so we're not being super specific, but a TV show.
Georgia:A TV show. I would say, like, overall, because, you know, we did you know, if you don't consider the deal after the fact, like, did a Netflix deal where we sold the TV show to Netflix Australia after our, like, hold back period with ABC ended, and that netted us $100. But that was great passive revenue. I didn't have to do much for it. I'll tell you about the fight that I had to have with ABC for twelve months straight separately.
Georgia:But technically, if it was a normal situation and I didn't have to fight for a year about my fucking social media rights, then it would have been a really easy $100. And that's why television production companies hold higher stakes in the IP because the long tail revenue of a project like that can create income for years and years and years to come, depending on how many territories you get it sold to. So I just took it to Netflix, ANZ, made a $100. If it was the two conversations that I had with Netflix, it wasn't the 100 that I had to have with the ABC. It would have been a great deal.
Georgia:But all in all, when we were actually making the show, I think we made between the boys writing, directing, composing, all the fees, the production company, the marketing, the markups, we probably made half 1,000,000, and that was a year of our time. And so when you compare that to touring, you
Fred:go,
Georgia:apples and oranges, in terms of the money that it brings in. But the value of having a long form show commissioned with a major national broadcaster means talent have eyeballs. And people come to us and go, Hey, you did that TV show with the ABC. We really want to work with you as well. And so, we have like those, like, indicators going off, going, hey, we can we can get a TV show up.
Georgia:It's the most fucking impossible thing to do in this country, but we can do that. And so that was a really great talent generator for us, even though it didn't make us the most money. In comparison to a tour, It does make money, and it it indicates success. And, you know, it it helps talent kind of come to you and be like, hey. You're legitimate, and I wanna work with you.
Georgia:And that's really nice as well.
Ant:One one more Rev one that Fred didn't touch. Merch.
Georgia:Ugh. The worst. The worst unless it's on a tour. Like, I think, overall, like, I get the I just literally saw an invoice go out, and it was for $3 this month. And but on a tour on the world tour, we made a $180.
Georgia:So it's like it depends on what it is. I'd say touring merch? Hell, yeah. But ecom, I would look at it like, personally, I see it as a marketing endeavor. I love fucking love walking through an airport and seeing someone wearing a Donna jumper.
Georgia:Like, it's my favorite thing. I'll go up to them and be like, hey, man. Are you a big fan? And they'll be like, yeah. A big fan.
Georgia:You're big fan. I'm gonna give some free tickets to a show. Like, genuinely, because I just love seeing someone rocking the brand in public. So, yeah, I clocked that more of as, a a marketing piece rather than a massive kind of revenue generator. But, again, that marketing piece has its has its value in the ecosystem.
Georgia:It's not just about the money.
Ant:100%. And then most important question of this entire podcast. What's your favorite Auntie Donna skit or bit?
Georgia:They're gonna hate me for saying it because they kind of don't really, like, back the final joke as much anymore because, ethically, it's, like, kinda not great, but Biku Boys. It was, like, Biku Boys forever because it's such an earworm. It's such a good track as well as being fucking dark and hilarious. Like, I used to have the earworm of, and my dad used to fuck me, rippity doo, stuck in my head. I still get it stuck in my head when it gets played.
Georgia:But most recently, it's the coup d'etat series that's been happening. So I don't know if you're across our content, we've got a political system internally with the three boys. There's three votes. They represent 33% of the conglomerate that votes the president in. It was, Zach was the president, now Mark is the president, and he's just been usurped by General Listeno Broden, and it's because of his big arms, and he shook him around.
Georgia:I just find that whole video. Like, I was pissing myself laughing, just thinking it was the funniest thing. So yeah. Love that. Love that.
Fred:I reckon Bigoted Bill is still my favorite. Whenever I hear that song, it gets stuck in my head, and I'm like, that's that's
Georgia:That actually it took over as highest view video from Viking Wars
Fred:two years ago. Yeah. Yeah.
Georgia:Yeah. What what's yours, Anne? What's yours?
Ant:It's just the annual favorite, like, Christmas pud. Yeah. Like, it just it
Georgia:Classic. It it just
Ant:stuck, and it just so hit so real for me too. Like, it's just a universal truth. I just love yeah. I've got a bit of room for Christmas pud and just yeah. So much fun.
Ant:But
Georgia:yeah. Love it.
Fred:Amazing. Georgia, we are out of time. Thank you so much. That was super enlightening and super open. Appreciate it.
Georgia:Thank you for having me, guys. I really appreciate it.
Ant:Create a generation to look on the mic.