Summer Special – Thomas’ Origin Story pt 2

Adam: [00:00:24] Hello and welcome to comedian versus economist Summer Edition. Look, we'll be back with our usual programming on February the 2nd. But today we're going to continue where we left off last week. Something a little bit different. We're looking back and exploring Thomas's origin story like some sort of X-Men character. And this is the second part of an interview that we did recently. With that Thomas did with some students of his old university, his old alma mater, the University of Queensland. Look, they say that university is a time of experimentation and self-discovery. It seems that Thomas experimented with being a massive nerd and discovered that he has a kink for spreadsheets. Look, today we'll finish off that interview. We get to hear all about the fascinating places that Thomas's journey has taken him again. Special thanks to Francisco and the team at University of Queensland Economics Society and the World on OMICS podcast. And remember, we'll be back with our usual schedule of comedian versus economist on February the 2nd. Hope you enjoy the second part of this interview, and I'll look forward to talking to you again soon. [00:01:29][64.9]

Speaker 3: [00:01:31] Would you mind sharing a bit more about your experience with the Sufi community? [00:01:35][3.7]

Thomas: [00:01:35] Oh, that's a big question. It's a big question. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it's it's amazing. It's quite it's quite hard to understand from the sort of western cultural perspective like you. It's the there's sort of one you're living in Turkish culture. So that's a that has a that's a bit it has a particular flavour, can be like, I love it. It's very staunch. It can be really. It's very strong. And so that that sort of comes into the spiritual practises as well. It's a very staunch and disciplined and regimented spiritual practise, but it's also very soft and loving, and it has this yeah, and a real celebration of beauty. I think it's what I love so more attracted to Sufism than, say, some of the Buddhism. Like it's it's real celebration of of of life and the blossoming culture of life. Yeah. And so I really love that, and I really loved those those two in combination, like a strong, regimented discipline combined with a love of beauty as a spiritual practise I really loved. [00:02:41][65.2]

Speaker 3: [00:02:41] Oh, that's fantastic. It's a very interesting, and [00:02:45][3.7]

Speaker 5: [00:02:45] I'm actually divine of Alice Francisco. I'm actually interested in the cabaret. True? How did you get into that? [00:02:53][7.0]

Thomas: [00:02:54] Um, I was. I was running a bunch of poetry and spoken word nights in Sydney on the on the side. So I've always I've always like if I didn't do economics, I would have done literature and poetry at university. That would have been my thing, but I kind of always knew that I could. It's as it's a career that in probably like a day, you know, like, I want to feel like I needed to set myself up in the world. Yeah. And so I was running sort of spoken word and these open mike nights and developing my own sort of material. And then you just, uh, fell in, fell in with this crew who had had a couple of gigs lined up right at these sort of big music festivals. And yeah, and so I sort of though they were doing auditions and I said, Oh, I've got these, these couple of these poems, which are kind of like these rousing inflammatory speeches based on some of the Sufi stuff I was reading at the time. Yeah. And they kind of dug it. And so I became sort of like the poet emcee of this of this troupe for a while. [00:03:56][61.3]

Speaker 5: [00:03:57] That's so cool. That's such a random thing to like. Add to your career. I love that. [00:04:01][4.2]

Speaker 3: [00:04:02] Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I believe you were ghostwriting while you were travelling with part of the work you were doing. Like, how does that work? How was it working away from from Australia? How did it help you? [00:04:17][15.0]

Thomas: [00:04:18] Hmm. Yeah. So when I was in Istanbul, it's the set myself up there. And yes, I stayed three years, so I needed to sort of find a way to support myself. And I started teaching English to business people because I had a business background, which was, which was, which was super interesting as well. So I'd go round to like the CEO of Marvie Jeans, who produces jeans for all the big jeans labels out of turkey, and I'd sit down and just chat with him in English. And that was my gig, so I guess I'd learn about him and his lifestyle and his background. So it was super fascinating. But it was also hard work and required sort of busing all over Istanbul, which is a huge city. And but it was about the time the internet was kicking off. Well, no, I mean, we have like the online work was becoming a thing. And so I got onto a clearinghouse called Upwork. And if you heard that one Upwork dot com were basically people go on their posts, post jobs that they need doing, and then you can apply and say, Hey, I've got these skills I can I can do that job. And then I noticed that there was a lot of jobs there for. Or riders with with a finance background with who could who could sort of speak like they knew the business world and that that's actually a really valuable skill and it's quite hard to to teach. That is, I guess, she went or left the RBA. I did. I interviewed at the AFA. They were doing a call out for jobs and I got offered a job at the AFR. And their philosophy is talking to the editor was that it's much easier to train someone with an economics background how to write than it is to train a rider, how to think like an economist. And so the idea that's really interesting. And so I've found that that's that's been true as well, like with with the ghost riding in the riding I've done online. Is that just having that ability to talk in that lexicon to to talk like a business person like that? You're confident about how business works, how the economy works, how the trends that are affecting a business work creates a lot of opportunity. There's a lot of opportunity for riders who can hold that voice. Yeah. And so that's what I found. And then so I got into that kind of riding and then got into ghost riding in particular because ghost riding, I I'm sure, as you know, you're right, you're pretending that you're that person. They put their name at the end of it. So it has that sort of technical side, but then it also has the colour because you've got a present, you're creating, you do. You're doing relationship building. So it's sort of it's content marketing, so you it goes out on email lists or on the web or becomes searchable content that then then creates a relationship between a potential customer and the brand identity. And so you need to you need to be able to give that brand identity some flavour and give people a way to connect with it. Yeah, and that's that's a creative exercise. And so I really enjoy that side of it. Mm-Hmm. So yeah, so I think I picked that up when I when I was over there because it was a great way to get to work online and travel, and you have been doing it ever since. So yeah, it's it's it's been it's been a sweet little gig [00:07:19][181.4]

Speaker 3: [00:07:20] that's really nice and it's a lot of marketing too, right? Thank you. It's been a lot of marketing with a [00:07:27][6.9]

Thomas: [00:07:28] yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've I've picked up a lot about a lot of a lot of awareness of how sales funnels and all of that work just by being in that space and seeing seeing the kind of stuff that the clients are asking for. Yeah. So that's been really interesting. [00:07:43][15.1]

Speaker 3: [00:07:44] Well, I think your travels at a certain point got to an end and you came back to Australia, right? The first your first project was Renew Fest, your first project and when you arrived back to Australia. [00:07:57][13.5]

Thomas: [00:07:58] No, no, no. One to maybe one of the first. Yeah, I can't remember exactly where that fits in. Been involved for about four or five years. So they is a sustainability focussed festival, sort of sort of somewhere between a sustainability expo and a TEDTalks festival. So we have a lot of panels and discussion topics and we hope. But in a sort of festival context, so big tents and lots of stuff going on. And yes, it's a it's a really awesome festival. But they had identified the economics as one of the key streams that they wanted to focus on. So it's energy, biodiversity, humanity, renew economics, food production. And so seeing that these are the core theme that we need, we need to advance on. Yeah. And then so I've sort of put my hand up and said, I can I can help put together an economics programme that some awareness of of the characters in the space and not so. Yeah, so I sort of came onboard as a sort of the economics programme coordinator one year. And then from there, the year after that became the I guess you call programme coordinator. So sort of looking at all those streams and then we moved to sort of make it more interdisciplinary. So we had initially it was like the economics programme. It's just economics, but it was like, let's get the economists in with the farmers and get them in with the people in mental health front line and get them all talking because it's all kind of the same issues that we're looking at, like it's such a multifaceted crisis that we're in right now, but it's all pushing at the same fronts. And you know, it's showing the systems are showing up in different, different fields, but at all you can you can find these common causes in at all. Yeah. So we sort of move to a more interdisciplinary focus, which is which has been really juicy. [00:09:45][107.2]

Speaker 5: [00:09:46] So we also saw that you worked at the Centre for Conservation Geography for a little bit. So what kind of research does the Centre for Conservation Geography do? And kind of how does an economist contribute to that? [00:10:02][16.0]

Thomas: [00:10:04] Yeah. So the Centre for Conservation Geographies, great little NGO and its IT aims to provide research to support progressive conservation efforts around marine areas and marine life and. Sort of marine protected areas and that sort of thing helping create those. Yeah, and then I was brought in to sort of build some economic or economic arguments. So we all like a question like if you created a protected a no fish zone in a particular area, what impact does that have on, you know, the fish fish, the fishing industry in that area, but also then the tourism industry, those kind of things are trying to sort of put a number on that. We tried to estimate the value of the scuba dive industry in Australia. There was no figures on that, but we knew that there's a lot of people doing scuba diving. We know that it's there's a lot of value in it, but it's not being captured in in the sort of trying to measure the economic benefits of a marine it marine protected area. So we're trying to add some some nuance to that. Yes. So as an economist, you try to just put some numbers on these stories for light. This is what we think this is worth. This is why we think it should be protected. Yeah, that's that sort of thing. So kind of kind of telling that story, finding a way to build build that argument. And that was really creative work, actually, because because the data is just not there. So so like with that trying to estimate the value of of the scuba dive industry, there's no real data there. So it's like, say, okay, how can we build this up? Like, what can we take? Scuba sales data? Can we try to find some data from that and then try to scale it up like, Okay, we know this one scuba shop in Sydney sells this much. Is there some reasonable assumptions that we could make that we could scale that up to be two to something like a national number or, well, what would be a reasonable range like if we did scale that up? Like, how much certainty do we have about what's a reasonable range we can put on that? So yes, it's quite creative thinking. [00:12:15][130.6]

Speaker 3: [00:12:19] Moving to present day things after what sounds like an amazing and genuinely exciting career from uni, you are the principal at Integrity Economics Down, based in northern northern New South Wales. I have to tell us a bit about how you will launch into integrity, economics and the work you do with them now. [00:12:48][28.6]

Thomas: [00:12:49] Hmm. Yeah. Integrity Economics is sort of the name for my own brand, and so I don't have to hustle for work right now because I've got a steady stream of clients who just need to work on a regular basis. So but back when I was hustling for work, you know, putting myself out there, then that was the unit that was sort of the the brand face for me. So that makes sense. So yeah, because it just sounds better than, Hey, it's me. I've got I've got a I've got an organisation here, so it's a bit of branding, really. But yes, it is sort of putting myself out there. But also, yeah, it was a way to sort of put myself out there. So showcase the kind of work that I want I did and was wanting to do. And also at that time, I was involved in an eco village project and we were developing, trying to develop the business case for that and trying to sell the benefits of the of the Eco Village concept. And so I was doing some modelling around that. And then you're presenting that through the through the consultancy, through through integrity economics and saying, Look, this is this is the numbers that have come up with this is my website. Come talk to me if you want to. If you want to explore these numbers more, understand more where they're coming from. Yeah, but that was that was sort of the the sort of the drive behind that. But I'm kind of I'm kind of in a lucky situation now where that sort of settled down. I've got I've got the regular clients. I don't yeah. If I if I need more work, I can kind of just hit them up. And they've got people who know who need work like that. So that, yeah, my client now that I said to me said, Look, I've got as much work as you want, so just just let me know. So yeah, that's that's really sweet. [00:14:34][105.1]

Speaker 3: [00:14:36] We're finally back to comedian versus economist now, so you already you already said the before before you get in contact with with Alec and Bryce you, Adam, and you had did a few episodes, right? How how did it work? And like, how was the decision of maybe teaming up with them to to launch comedian versus economies? Ah yeah, [00:15:03][27.5]

Thomas: [00:15:03] it was a very easy so so we did. We did six episodes as a pilot and we both got young kids. And so we're sort of squeezing it around. All of that and the contents reasonably easy because it's sort of work that I'm it's stuff that I'm looking at already as reports that I'm writing already. So I'm mostly just leveraging work that I'm doing and into. I'm pulling out interesting topics out of that and Adam's asking some questions. So the content creation side is relatively easy, but the production side was hard we were finding. So getting it edited properly, getting it out there. So we did those six episodes. We found the editing and production was taking a bit more time than we anticipated, which was a bit of a story. And then we, you know, we're sitting on a podcast that had the listenership of maybe 50, 100 people, which was all our friends and we're like, Okay, so what's the next step here? How do we build this? And so it's like, Oh, well, guess we could, you know, have a marketing campaign tragedies that was out there like all these things and we're both like, Are we really that into it? Like, I don't know if that sounds like quite a lot of work. And so with Alexa, 016, let's just sit on it for a bit. We'll think about it, and it was kind of right about that time. Alec and Bryce put out a call saying, like, if we were looking for new content, you've got any ideas hit us up. And so we sent that to them and they listen to it and they loved it and all this is great. They really want to get behind it. If you guys want to share with and said, Look what we can do. You guys do the content and we'll do all the version and the marketing. And we're like, Oh, so like, that's great. That's all the stuff that we don't want to do. And so we've got a yeah, there's a the head of production there. Sasha is amazing. So we just render the raw files will often just stop in the middle and go, Oh, sorry, Sasha, we muft that up and we just go back and start again. And so we don't we don't even we don't even touch it. So we just record it. Send it to Sasha. She does an amazing job, whips it into shape, and the Equity Mates guys pump it out. So from our perspective, as as puppies with, you know, busy lives already, it's super awesome. Like, yeah, I don't I don't think we would be able to do it without Equity Mates, for sure. [00:17:15][131.9]

Speaker 3: [00:17:18] Now, that's great, it sounds like it's a platform that put you already somewhere. Very interesting. I'll remember that some time ago, either outlook or Bryce, they had to record with like a dune on top of them. But I don't think you've been through this process. I think it started already with a microphone in the favour. [00:17:38][20.8]

Thomas: [00:17:39] Yeah, maybe. I mean, I'm using it. I mean, using a yeti blue, which is I think it's $200. No other uses of road. Yeah, but this yeti blue, I love it. It's great. It's super portable. It's is sound. It sounds good. Yeah. Yeah, like a nano. Sometimes I'm I'm not. I'm never under a do. No, but I was last night I was out on the street because it was too noisy in the house and the thing's going on. So yeah, it's still it's still amateur hour. I know we sound professional, but yeah, we're still amateurs. [00:18:11][31.1]

Speaker 3: [00:18:11] Oh, you definitely sound professional. Yeah, I would recommend the microphone you have. And how is it? How is it working with you, your brother, like you guys were already planning to work together? Have you always been close or it was something that popped up later in life? [00:18:28][17.1]

Thomas: [00:18:30] Yeah, it's actually it's actually the best thing about it, because because we both got young kids now under under five and we just we we just weren't talking to each other. He's in Adelaide, I'm in, I'm in Mullumbimby, sort of near Byron Bay. And so, you know, we'd try to catch up and, you know, we would try go over and see each other sort of kind of semi-regularly. But you just don't really spend that much time together because you just consumed by life. And so it's been really great to to have this project, to have this excuse to catch up once a week because he's a really funny guy. Like, I love talking with him. And he, yeah, he's always he's always cracked me up, you know, and not many people do. So I really love you having that chat with him. And yeah, and it's great to sort of see where his career has sort of gone in that sense. Like he, his sister, is really interesting. So he dropped out of year 11 in high school and got a job at the Apple Store. Like in 1996, it would have been or something. So before Apple was really a thing, set himself up as an Apple expert, which then went into this whole story. And now he's got this whole career around sort of identity management and in the I.T. space. So yeah, he's done really well. But yeah, and he had to stand up comedy gigs. So it was kind of funny like we both. I was in a columnist who did poetry on the side and he was an it guy who did comedy on the side and say, Yeah, comedian versus economists kind of pulls all four of those things together somehow. And then they said, Yeah, yeah. So we've always yeah, it's just it's nice. I don't think we never would have planned it. But yeah, we're really happy that we're we're in it now, [00:20:05][94.4]

Speaker 3: [00:20:06] and we definitely can see the chemistry of listening to the podcast. It's great. And I think now wrapping up a little bit with with our questions. [00:20:17][10.4]

Speaker 5: [00:20:18] Oh yeah, so that's okay. Yeah. So we're just getting to the end of our question. So I think each of us kind of have specific questions probably more tailored to people in uni, kind of just like your advice. So what is something that you kind of wish you knew before entering into the workforce? [00:20:39][20.5]

Thomas: [00:20:43] I wish that I would. I had some idea of what nine to five work was like. Like, I was totally blindsided by that when I started work that, you know, like when I was at university, like I was a night owl. So like, you know, I think people, a lot of people would relate to this. But I study like I would do most of my study between 10 and 2:00 in the morning. And then the mornings were always pretty slow. And and then and cramming as well. That's the other thing. Like, so I'd have a busy social life leading up through most of the semester and then just go really, really hard for, you know, I would I would not drink coffee all semester just so that when exams here, I could just hit the coffee and it would have maximum impact and I'd just go super hard. That approach doesn't work in the workforce. Like, is it? You know, I found it like just being on deck at nine o'clock in the morning was just such a struggle for me early on. Like I couldn't even get ahead. And I felt like I was falling asleep in meetings like it was. This is kind of embarrassing. Yeah, yeah. So I think I wish I kind of wish I had some like bit more experience of that before I hit the RBA, before I hit that first job straight out that I had done something through that summer. Just like get in in the groove of having a nine to five steady job, getting up regular hours. Yeah, yeah. That gearshift was it was really it was a real struggle for me. [00:22:20][97.0]

Speaker 5: [00:22:22] Really does. Oh, sorry. [00:22:23][1.0]

Speaker 3: [00:22:24] Maybe I'm just going to find that so funny, because I think that's backwards to what I do as someone who is a massive coffee drinker and I come to exam time and the coffee sort of doesn't have to have its effectiveness, and I need to move on to other things like energy drinks. But I know you said it wasn't that biased, but I'm going to take it as advice. What sort of tips do you have students who it in economics now like? Would you frame it around, say, econometrics or game theory, as you mentioned earlier? Or is it like a pot, like a pot of economics that you think might be more valuable than others or just general interest? [00:23:04][40.1]

Thomas: [00:23:08] Yeah, I mean, I think it's I think it's good to follow your passions. I think I probably did more economic economics econometrics than I needed to and I probably should have because I just wasn't really that suited to statistics. I didn't. And and the modelling that I didn't, I didn't really love that a lot. I got into game theory and thinking about about that, that that really spot, you know, that fitted me. And yeah, so I did it probably more than I needed to. And even then when I when I go down to the world, a lot of it is going to hate me, hate me saying this. But a lot of it's computer based now, so you can kind of any monkey can drive it really at a certain level, like if you if you want to sort of get into, you know, develop your own models and do academic work and you really need to understand it. But in an applied sense, I think you can. You can. You don't need all that much. So like, I think you definitely need it and you definitely need to be numerous. I think that's really what you know, gives you an advantage as an economist and allows you to step into different worlds that you can talk about growth rates and understand what that means and be able to compare growth rates and think about percentage changes and that sort of things. And it's that's not super complex, but but it's like if you can get if you can get quick with that, you get snappy with that and kind of quickly see how that works, then that really sets you up. Well, I think so. I think, yes, it definitely you definitely pay attention to that side. Definitely get how statistics work. Like if there's one book I'd recommend, is Daniel Kahneman thinking fast and slow? You know that one. So Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel prise a while back, but thinking fast and slow is an amazing book, and it's just about how bad humans are about thinking about probability and statistics. And so that's just a great life practise to be able to think about probability, understand, you know, the likelihood of winning the lottery or what one in a one in 100 million actually means. Yeah. So to do that, but I think, yeah, then I think follow your interests and there's a lot of ways that that can go. And I think like fundamentally as an economist, you're a storyteller, like you're telling stories and all your characters are thought or pieces of the economy. And so like the work that I do ghost writing, or even with the comedian versus economist, it's all storytelling and your ability. Your strength as an economist is your ability to sort of like pull all these different moving pieces of the puzzle into a coherent narrative. And it's that narrative that sells. And so even at the bank, even though like obviously with the ghost writing in the content marketing stuff I do, it's all about the narrative. But even at the RBA, it's very much a narrative. It's like, you know, full time jobs are down this month. This means this which is going to mean that. And it's that coherent sort of narrative that moves through that it allows you to is is your strength is what you're selling to the market. And so I think like, yeah, so following that interest, getting learning how the stories work, being able to tell those stories, get get versed in telling those stories, I think would yeah, will set you set. [00:26:19][190.8]

Speaker 3: [00:26:19] You're right that that is great. Yeah. So for the book people paying attention, they're thinking fast and so definitely a big recommendation. Mm hmm. That's excellent. I think that's it. Thank you so much for making time and being here for our interview. It was great. It's such a prolific career. You have so many things you do in life. We were really excited to have you here. Thank you so much. [00:26:45][26.3]

Thomas: [00:26:46] No thanks. Thanks for having me. It's been great to connect. Like I was saying just before, like I organised a bunch of barbecues for the economics society back in the nineties, so it's great to see it's kicking on and going from strength to strength. Yeah. Well done, guys. [00:27:00][13.9]

Adam: [00:27:02] There you go, guys. That wraps up Thomas's interview with the University of Queensland Economics Society. Hope you found it interesting. I certainly did, particularly the bit where he said he really enjoyed us spending time together. Everyone has their own opinion, I suppose. Don't forget we'll be back with our regular Comedian Versus Economist podcast on February the 2nd. We do have some more special episodes coming up for you over the summer. Thomas has hosted some panel discussions from a festival that he was recently involved in. Some really interesting stuff coming up there, so make sure you stay tuned throughout the summer for more of those. And as I say, it will be back in on February the 2nd. For more comedian versus economist, talk to you then. [00:27:02][0.0]

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