Boardroom Confidential with Taryn Williams

BENNETT MASON

Hello and welcome to Boardroom Conversations, a podcast from the Australian Institute of Company Directors. My name is Bennett Mason and thanks so much for joining us. In each episode will have candid conversations with some of Australia's top directors, leaders and experts, delving into their background and discussing many of the key issues that boards are grappling with. Our guest this time is Taryn Williams. She's an award-winning CEO and founder, working at the intersection of talent, media and technology. At just 21, Tarin started Wink Models, which has grown to become a leading modelling agency. She's also built and exited a number of companies and holds several board roles. On top of that, Taryn recently completed the AICD’s Company Directors Course too. Taryn, thanks so much for joining us. Now, we mentioned a moment ago that you started your very first business, Wink Models, at just 21 years old. What made you do that? What inspired you to make that leap from modelling to having your own business?

TARYN WILLIAMS

Insanity. Blissful naivety of youth. I think a little bit of both, probably. I guess I didn't know at that age that it really was something unconventional to go and start your own business. I'd worked around a number of freelance people, obviously freelance creatives, photographers. That whole industry is quite sort of flexible. And because I hadn't had a traditional career, I didn't have a traditional job to go and leave. So it wasn't like I had to make this big sort of decision to go and quit my job and go and start something on my own, and I just sort of saw in it all of these inefficiencies and inequalities in the industry and how it was operating. So predominantly, I think the biggest pain point for me was it took sort of 60, 90 days to get paid as a model, which to me just didn't make sense. I was like, it didn't happen in any other industry. But the logic was that the agency had to wait for the client to pay them and the advertising agency then had to pay the talent agency or the modelling agency. And I was like, well, you know, your cash flow is not really my issue. You know, I'm the talent. You should have enough cash flow to be able to pay your talent, you know, within 14 days or 30 days at the worst, like any other business. So, I thought, I'm going to start my own agency. I'm going to pay everyone in seven days, and I'm going to treat them with decency and respect and build like a really family type atmosphere and sort of grow from there.

BENNETT MASON

You've now started a number of businesses. You've built and exited many of these companies. What do you think are some of the most significant lessons you've learnt from scaling and then selling these companies?

TARYN WILLIAMS

Oh gosh. I mean, I think probably most of my career has developed from trying to stay aware of what was happening in the broader ecosystem and trying to have a macro level of industry changes. So, my next business was a two-sided marketplace for creative talent, a tech business, and I built an end-to-end onboarding management and payroll integration software for Wink, the modelling agency. And so, I could see that there was this shift towards fast turnaround digital content. I could see that there was advent of other marketplaces like Airtasker and Freelancer had just launched. And so, I could see that there was a shift coming and I wanted to be at the forefront of it. So, I think a lot of my career has sort of stemmed from trying to stay on top and adapt, you know, to how the broader industry was changing. And then I think probably the success in scaling and selling and exiting was around sort of really trying to be aware of needing to have great people around me, whether that was mentors, advisors, board members, making sure that, you know, I don't think it can be a single solo person race at any one point in time. You need to be able to build great teams, great advisory boards, and understanding when the right time is to step out of one venture and into another.

BENNETT MASON

This is something that I'm sure many founders struggle with. You've built this company. It's your baby. You're putting in your own blood, sweat and tears and money. How do you know it's the right time to bring in other people, whether it's advisors, investors or board members?

TARYN WILLIAMS

Yeah. And you're absolutely right. It can be really difficult, especially bringing in a formal CEO. I think a lot of founders struggle with the idea of, you know, maybe not being the person in charge and making all the day to day decisions. But I think for me, it was a combination of things. It was recognising the point the business was at. So, for example, there was a very, very clear point with the theright.fit, the two-sided marketplace that I built where raising capital made a lot of sense for us because we needed to build a defensible market. We have product market fit, and we needed to scale really, really quickly. And so, to do that, I needed to obviously build a bigger team. I needed to bring in external capital, and I needed to build a formal board or advisors because I was not a technical founder. I had very deep domain expertise, but I didn't have technical expertise or marketplace expertise. So, I was very clear when I did that cap raise the kind of people that I wanted around the table on our board. So, I think it can be difficult to identify when the exact right point is to either raise capital. I think bringing in external team members should always be as soon as you become the bottleneck in the organisation and you're blocking growth because you want to be across every single detail or hire or decision. You know, I think it's probably time to bring in, you know, broader team members. But I think recognising the right time to exit can be really challenging because you're right, it is, you know, something that you've become so attached to. Your own baby and thinking about it going and, you know, living a life outside of you and after you can be really challenging.

BENNETT MASON

It must be quite emotional sometimes saying goodbye to that company, that thing you've built.

TARYN WILLIAMS

Yeah. When I sold the theright.fit - so we had offices in Singapore, in Sydney, Melbourne, and we had people working internationally as well. So, both in the US and in the Philippines and in India. And I brought all of the team together in Bali to say goodbye. And it was sad. I didn't realise it at the time because I think, you know, you'd been head down in six months of DD and, you know, getting through the process of selling a business. And it really hit me, having them all there and seeing people face to face and having all of these one-on-one conversations. Some people who'd been with me for four or five, six years through a lot of the journey of growing and scaling that business. And yeah, it was incredibly emotional of saying goodbye and accepting that it was going to go on and have a new life.

BENNETT MASON

So, let's talk a bit more about your career. You've had these roles as a founder, as a chief executive, but you've also taken on a number of director and advisory positions. What drew you to those sorts of board roles, and how has it evolved alongside your other work?

TARYN WILLIAMS

So, my first board role was just a tap on the shoulder. “You know, we're an organisation that think you could add a lot of value. Would you be interested in joining?” And to be honest, I probably hadn't thought a lot about it until that point. And I was at a point in my career where I had enough time and flexibility to be able to join an external board, but I really sat down and thought about it at that point and thought: “Is this something that I want to do that I have the skills to do? That I have the interest in developing that sort of area of my career?” So I went and saw a lot of my mentors, actually, and had a lot of conversations about, you know, it's a very obviously a very, very different role to being a founder, an entrepreneur and CEO, which was sort of my career path to that date. So, I, you know, made the decision to join a board, one board to start with. And I really loved it. It exposes you to so many different things outside of your own, you know, skillset and wheelhouse and being around these incredible other board members who I was just learning so much from and I guess having quite a different skillset and background and domain expertise. Really feeling like I could add value to an organisation that wasn't my own was something that really, I guess, derived a lot of satisfaction from seeing that being applied to a company that wasn't my own for a change. So, I really enjoyed the process. And so after that I was much more mindful and sat down and thought about, okay, how do I want to build a portfolio career of things that both I derive a lot of satisfaction from, that I feel like I'm giving back in sort of my non-for-profit board roles in that sense, and then still being abreast of the next generation of, of companies that are coming through. So, sitting on boards for tech Start-Ups and AI companies, so that I get to keep my finger on the pulse.

BENNETT MASON

This is something we talk to a lot of people about: balancing founder roles or executive roles with board positions. Like you said they are very different roles. How do you balance that? How do you approach the two different mindsets?

TARYN WILLIAMS

It's such a mindset shift. That's the best way to describe it, I think. Especially if you've been, as I have, only ever been, a founder and CEO of my own companies. In that role, you are, you know, pivoting quickly. You're making decisions, you’re hands on. You know, you are so in the detail and granularity, and you are probably the person that knows the most about your company at any one point in time. And then switching and putting your hat on as a board member, and the completely different skillset required and completely different mindset required of being able to step back, have that 30,000ft view, being able to look at broader industry trends and being able to just interrogate ideas coming from founders, coming from management and C-suite. It's a completely different skill set. So, it did take a while, I think, to adapt and change and really probably for the first year of sitting in board meetings, I would really have to come very, very prepared and thinking about, okay, you're not here to solve the problem. It's not your job to come up with a tactical executional role. You're here to support the management, to challenge management. And really, I think, stepping out of the granularity in the weeds, I think was probably the biggest challenge for me. So, it definitely takes time. And I absolutely love it now because it does work a completely different part of your brain.

BENNETT MASON

We talked earlier about some of the companies that you've built, and you've clearly got an eye for opportunities and an eye for disruption. How do you do that when you're looking for an industry, a sector, a marketplace to innovate? What are you looking for? And also, I guess, what are the lessons for boards out of that?

TARYN WILLIAMS

I've always been a very curious person. I've always loved learning. I've always loved challenging myself. Like, I got my pilot's license when I was 15, before I could drive a car, just really silly things like that, where I think it was a very conscious choice to really Always be looking at the landscape and going, what else could I be doing? What else could I be learning? And I think that that's, you know, trickled through in my commercial career as well. So probably about two and a half, three years ago, I really started thinking and looking at AI and learning about AI, getting to the weeds of AI, because I could just start to see there were trends happening, and I wanted to be on top of that, and I wanted to be abreast of that. So, I think probably the biggest takeaway is just always being curious. Always considering yourself in permanent beta as well. Like, I still do so much continuing education. Right now, to this day, you know, and I always think there's more I can learn. There's definitely things that I could be more across. And so, I think having that curiosity and always wanting to continue developing as a board member is really important.  Because I think, especially in this day and age, so many industries are ripe for disruption. And it's going to be, you know, quite terrifying, I think, for a number of organisations as to how they navigate this next sort of two, three, four-year chapter.

BENNETT MASON

You've now been on both sides of that founder and board member relationship. We might have a listener out there who has their own company, They're a founder. When is the right time to bring on those board members? And do you have any advice for founders on how to start working with advisory groups or board members?

TARYN WILLIAMS

So, I probably had been doing it informally. If I look back on it now, I probably always had a really core group of mentors around me who I would say informally for one-on-one coffees or catch ups to really workshop particular ideas or problems or challenges or growth stages of the organisation. So, I had probably been doing that informally and not really thought about formalising it until we raised our first round of capital, and then obviously that came with needing to build a formal board. My advice to founders would be do it way earlier than you think you need to. And I found that it just put so much robustness around us as an organisation, and it added so much support. I mean, a great board shouldn't slow you down. I think I went through a period of thinking, My God, I'm spending a day a month on reporting. And you know, that's super arduous and time consuming and that's time that's taking me away from executing. But it actually put these, you know, belts and braces around the organisation and gave us this rigour and focus and made us actually stop and reflect on what had succeeded. The challenge of articulating what you've done over the last 30-day period, what went well, what didn't, and why to someone who is not in the granularity of the day to day I found so beneficial. So, I would definitely recommend if you don't have a formal board, definitely an advisory board is really, really beneficial. And I think just in our case opened so many doors. It really connected me to different people that I probably wouldn't have otherwise been exposed to and just gave me a much better 360-view of the company and where our strengths and weaknesses were.

BENNETT MASON

That's the relationship from the founder side. What about from the board member side? How can a board, how can directors really help not just the founder, but also help the whole organisation, the whole company grow? What should they be doing?

TARYN WILLIAMS

Yeah. So, I think firstly make sure you deeply understand the organisation. So, I think it can be very common for board members to join an organisation and not really have a deep understanding of the underlying business or, you know, the industry that it trades in. And so, I think it's really important to understand that. And deeply understand the drivers of the business and write down, if you can, to the unit economics, you know, all the underlying levers that are going to create success or failure in that organisation. And then I think really thinking strategically about how you can add value, and it can be really simple things down to opening doors, introductions, spending one-on-one time with the founder or CEO and making sure that you understand the strategy. Obviously you would have been brought onto that board for a particular reason, understanding what that reason was and how you can add the most support and value, I think, is really important and continue to interrogate that over time, because obviously the needs of the organisation are going to change over time, and your role within that will change. So, I think making sure you sort of stay on top of the industry and stay on top of the needs of the executive team is really important.

BENNETT MASON

Taryn, I wanted to drill down on some of the sectors or fields you've been involved with. A lot of your projects or companies have been focussed around creatives, influencers, branding, and reputation. Some listeners, some directors might not be overly familiar with those areas. But can you tell us why branding and why reputation is so important for organisations, for boards and I guess especially in this digital-first world we live in?

TARYN WILLIAMS

Yeah. And I think too often it's been sort of seen as marketing's problem. That's sort of not a board responsibility. But I think in this day and age, especially with, it's such an overused word, but authenticity, I think consumers now have a direct channel to be able to share their frustrations with the board, with a brand, with an organisation, and that's really important. So being able to control that narrative and understand the impact on the value of the company, the success or failure of being able to attract good talent. It really touches so many elements of, and areas that fall into a board’ responsibility. So, I think having an understanding of how the day-to-day operations of an organisation impact broader brand value is really important and having ways to measure and understand that. So, you know, whether that's through Net Promoter Scores, whether that's through monitoring social media feedback. All of those things are really important for a board to have visibility to and understand and also understanding that they're not this sort of intangible thing that you can never really understand or grasp or value. They really do, you know, have deep value, both at the sort of esoteric level, but at a financial level.

BENNETT MASON

I wanted to pick up on a couple things you said. You mentioned the importance of authenticity earlier. We also talked a little bit about AI. So how is artificial intelligence going to disrupt some of those areas, brand and reputation? And what does I mean for authenticity?

TARYN WILLIAMS

It's incredibly, incredibly challenging. And I think it's going to be a really terrifying time. I think generative AI and AI more broadly, but generative AI in particular is so exciting in terms of, you know, from a brand perspective, you can make a plethora of content that is customised right down to an individual. You know, you can do different languages and geographies in a much easier way than ever before, which is really exciting. It allows us to communicate better tech, but it also has a lot of downside risk in terms of exactly those authenticity pieces, fraudulent content and consumers just not knowing what to trust anymore, I think, is going to be the hardest thing, especially on social media channels where you're already starting to see it. And I'm sure everyone has had videos or clips shared by a friend saying, wow, look at this thing. And you're like, you know, that's made with AI. It's not real content. And so, I think the lens of a consumer in critical thinking, I think, is going to be a really difficult chasm for brands to be able to step over now and go, okay, we utilise these tools in a way that allow us to do certain things that are going to add value, and we have to be very, very careful not to destroy trust with the customer and the consumer, because I think that's going to be very, very challenging over the next sort of 12, 24 months. Until there's probably regulation around, obviously you see it on social media now, you’re supposed to flag things “made with AI.” Whether or not that happens is, is another case, but I think it's going to be an ongoing conversation and narrative and definitely something that should be coming to a board level. And do we have an AI strategy? How do we think about building trust with consumers? How do we ensure that we are not destroying brand with a big B through the use of these tools and new channels? Because I think it's going to be an incredibly challenging time.

BENNETT MASON

One of the areas with this that a lot of boards are struggling with is you want to have guardrails in place. You want to make sure that AI is not running amok and you've got the right structures, processes, and governance. But at the same time, you don't want to stifle innovation and miss out on opportunities. So how do you balance that as a founder, as an executive and as a board member? How do you balance that opportunity, but also the risks and the guardrails?

TARYN WILLIAMS

It's incredibly hard because I think not only are you having to look at what does this mean for my organisation? How can we successfully utilise some of these things to increase our speed to market, drive growth, all of that, you know, great things for an organisation. Versus yeah, where are the guardrails and boundaries and where can it cause risk for us? But then on top of that, most companies are using publicly available tools. And you don't know how these tools are trained, what they're built on, what inherent biases they have. So as much as you can try and put guardrails or braces around your own organisation and say, “Well, we're only going to use it for these things.” You actually don't know how the underlying models are trained. And that's really, really scary. So I think how I've been trying to look at it as both an executive and as a board member, what are ways that we can safely utilise AI in internal processes in a way that we can really clearly extract value and free our people up to go and spend time doing things that are more of a value add, versus handing over control of creative processes, of content over all sorts of things to AI, where we don't yet have a really clear understanding of maybe the second order impact of those decisions. So, I think it's something that not all, only one of the boards that I'm on has a very clear AI strategy at the moment. And I think the rest are really still grappling with what it's going to look like long term, how much money they should invest. There's no clear, you know, guardrails on that either in terms of should it be a percentage of total revenue. Should we be starting with particular elements of the business, like do we look at operations first? Do we look at marketing first? Or obviously the preferable approach is to try and break down those silos, build an amazing data warehouse and, you know, really think about it strategically. Unfortunately, it's very hard to do in existing businesses. And as we all know, big ships are harder to turn than ever. So, I think it's going to be a challenge that I don't have the single-handed answer to. But I think the most important thing for any board member is to stay abreast of what the opportunities are out there and, getting your hands dirty, playing with some of these tools so you can come and ask sort of informed questions and interrogating the sort of direction that the organisation is taking around AI.

BENNETT MASON

How are you using AI yourself, either as an executive or a board member?

TARYN WILLIAMS

Yeah, so I probably use maybe 15 or 20 AI tools on a daily basis across all different sorts of things, from deep research to really basic things like using ChatGPT to proof things before they go out or as a co-pilot in interrogating my decision making or as I'm thinking through things. AI notetakers, you know, there's so many basic things that have just solved a multitude of frustrating pain points. I've been in a deep, dark hole of exploring gen AI tools. So making a digital twin of myself that I could then train to make AI generated content, utilising it to edit marketing content into spliced down multiple different versions of something that would have taken an editor three, four or five days to do can now be done in seconds. Localising content. So, it's been a really interesting period of just trying to stay abreast of trends, seeing how good things actually are and where they could add value. And then thinking strategically across my own companies, at what point will we start to transition people away from maybe doing some of these tasks to purely utilising AI for those tasks? And I don't think we're quite there yet.

BENNETT MASON

Staying abreast of those trends, like you said, is going to be a core skill for directors going forward, as is AI literacy, knowing how to use these tools. What are some other skills you think directors and boards are going to need, going into the future?

TARYN WILLIAMS

It's such a great question. I mean, I personally think boards will start looking for deeper domain expertise in particular areas as opposed to generalists. Because I do think you will see the advent of very clear, you'll need to be a deep domain expert in cyber, for example. And every board will need that kind of skill set. Ideally, you should have someone who's a really deep domain expert in brand and marketing. And I think that's often a skill set that maybe gets missed at a board level. You know, there's always a great representation from sort of legal and financial, but maybe not brand. So, I think probably definitely having a strong understanding of sort of generalist things, like, I think AI will become something that is a base expectation that everyone should be a generalist in. I probably think EQ will rise to the top and being something that is more important, as we go through this generation of and next iteration of change, because I think that's going to be probably the one skill set that, for now, can't be replaced with AI. So, thinking about the thinking, I think will be really important as well, having a strategic ability to interrogate where the next opportunities are. I think boards have historically been very good at identifying risk and looking at risk and maybe not as focussed on opportunity. So, I think having a skillset around being able to identify opportunity, not just risk, will be important.

BENNETT MASON

We were talking about the boards of the future. What about the directors of the future? I'm sure they're going to have many of those skills that you just talked about. But what advice would you have for aspiring directors, how should they be positioning themselves?

TARYN WILLIAMS

Yeah. Look, I definitely think pursuing a really clear, deep domain expertise in a particular area, I think is key. So, I think identifying what that might be for you, I think all of the basic ones still stand, like having a really strong, robust understanding of how to run P&L, the financial drivers of a business. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I've always had to do that in my company as being a founder and entrepreneur. But most people don't have to run a P&L in their organisation. So, you know, having that financial literacy, being able to run a P&L and understanding the financial driver of an organisation, I think is really critically important. So, if you don't have that skill set, absolutely going and upskilling yourself on that. And then I think understanding is where your domain expertise lies and doubling down on that and really being able to showcase: “Here's how I've driven value in this particular area. Here's how I could, you know, really add that skill set at a board level.” And then I think, yeah, having a really good understanding of where the next opportunities and risks are. So, I think at the moment it's definitely AI, but also geopolitical instabilities. And I think understanding the broader ecosystem that we as businesses are going to have to exist in in the next three to five years, and how that will change as the geopolitical landscape changes, I think is very important too.

BENNETT MASON

We don't have too much time left. But I did want to talk a little bit about diversity. You've been a strong advocate for women in leadership. The tech sector, like a lot of industries, has a mixed record when it comes to gender balance, and women in leadership. But what change of you saying in the tech sector while you've been working there?

TARYN WILLIAMS

I mean, I think back to the right.fit. It would have been probably nearly ten years ago that I started building my first tech company, and there were so many times where I was the only women in a room, you know. There were no other female founders, there were no other females who had raised capital in that fund. So, it was an incredibly challenging time. And now it's definitely improved. And I think we've seen dedicated funds to help female founders raise capital, dedicated programs to help females in STEM, which is fantastic. We certainly haven't solved the problem. And, you know, I think I haven't seen any nation globally who has managed to solve the problem of solving representation in any field yet. I do think it's pleasing to see the numbers of women enrolling in STEM subjects, because a big part of the problem is a pipeline problem. And also now that we see this next generation of female founders coming out the other side, Mel from Canva,  fantastic female founders who have gone on and we've got these success stories that we can celebrate and show that there's a pathway to this being a viable career.

So, I think we're making steps in the right direction. We certainly don't have it solved. And I think, you know, government policy has a lot to play in this field as well. And I certainly think we need to have a cold, hard look at some of the decisions we're making and how we, more broadly celebrate, entrepreneurship in Australia and how we back and fund entrepreneurship. Because the last thing we want is more brain drain and, and people leaving and going to places where it is easier and more financially viable for founders to build great companies.

BENNETT MASON

I want to talk more about brain drain lessons from overseas in a moment but just sticking a little bit with diversity. You talked earlier about the importance of mentors. How have mentors helped you and helped shape you in your career?

TARYN WILLIAMS

I've been so fortunate to have incredible mentors, and they came really organically. I probably didn't realise it at the time, but I was very good at putting my hand up and asking for help. And so, I would proactively reach out to people, cold reach out on LinkedIn or someone who I'd met once at an event, and I'd say, “You know, I need to build a payment gateway. And I've narrowed it down to these particular providers and I've done this cost benefit. Can I please have half an hour of your time to go through these, ask you some questions?” And those would often develop into formal mentor relationships where, you know, I would meet with them monthly. Two ended up joining my board. One ended up becoming an investor, you know, so it was probably about putting my hand up, asking for help. And I reflect on people that I've mentored over the years and what makes a good mentee versus a great mentee. And I think people who come back and say, “I've done the eight things that you asked me to do, I haven't been able to do nine and ten and blocked on this particular area. Can I now have another half an hour of your time? Here's where I've got to, here's the growth results. This is what I've done X, Y and Z.” And who have come in with structured problems or questions to solve, I think separates the good from the great. As opposed to, “Can I just pick your brain? What should I do with my career?” Makes it very, very hard for someone to actually really add a lot of value. But I think having mentors is so important. Mine would hold me to account personally and professionally. I would frequently hear from them,
“I can see this repeat behaviour pattern happening here. Dig into that. What's going on here? This is career limiting for you.” Or: “This is going to stop you from achieving the things that you want to achieve.” And, just having people who are much further along the journey than you, who can add that value and a completely different perspective. Really, really important.

BENNETT MASON

Jumping back a bit, before we were talking about mentors, you were talking about the tech scene overseas and in other markets. At the time of recording, you're about to go overseas and you've got some business meetings in the Middle East coming up. You've worked around the world now. Are there other markets, other nations that approach, I guess, innovation and technology in a different way to Australia? And what can we learn from those other nations, other jurisdictions?

TARYN WILLIAMS

Yeah. Look, I think the US is a fantastic example. They just have such a different mindset approach to failure. Most great entrepreneurs there have had multiple failures. They've won it all. They've lost it all. They've won it all again. And that is a part of the journey. And there's no shame in that. And I think in Australia we have unfortunately a bit of a tall poppy syndrome. And then we also really see failure as something that should be shameful, that is not acceptable. And I think it limits the number of people who are really willing to take big risks. And unfortunately, that's what you need to build really innovative different companies. So, we really need to change that culture. So, I think the US does it really well. Obviously, they've got more capital to deploy. It's a bigger market. It's easier to win there in terms of, you've got a bigger population to sell products to. So, I also look at countries, I'm very interested by the Middle East at the moment. But Israel has a fantastic innovation, culture. And, you know, obviously that has been required because of their geographic positioning in the world and having to defend themselves, but their government also matches dollar for dollar investment spend in R&D. So, they have huge investment in R&D programs. So, you know, things like that, that we could easily apply here and really make sure that we're fostering great innovation and research and development. Because a lot, especially as you go into some of these more complex AI companies, for sure, but also medtech, fintech, a lot of these things can take a lot of time to show value. And I think if we want to encourage people to tackle complex long-term problems, quantum, then I think you have to accept that there's going to be require government investment and government funding to get those started. You know, the US did an amazing job of that, funding the internet, things like that. So, I think we really need to think as a nation, where do we want to be and what do we want to be known for in the world? You see countries like a lot of the nations in the Middle East making very strategic decisions to step away from being just petroleum countries and investing very heavily in R&D, in AI, those things are really important. I think they've got a very strategic national agenda. And I think we need to have the same. And not be over reliant on natural resources.

BENNETT MASON

So, it's no one thing. It's culture and policy and funding All together?

TARYN WILLIAMS

Very well-articulated.

BENNETT MASON

Looking back at your career, your executive roles, founder roles, and now your board career, is there one big insight that you wish you'd known back at the start?

TARYN WILLIAMS

Really good question. I think probably that you don't have to pigeonhole yourself into just one particular thing. I think that, probably the first ten years of my career, I was obviously very focussed on growing my first business, and I think I thought it needed to come at the cost of other things that I was very interested in. I studied politics and international relations at university, and I sort of really parked that part of myself or my brain or my career to really double down on building a business that was very much focussed on sort of media, creative, talent. So, I think probably if I reflect, I would have liked to have had a broader, first sort of 10 or 15 years of my career that allowed me to explore all of those different angles of myself and my personality. But, you know, I think, rightly or wrongly, it got me to where I am today and has afforded me the opportunity to come up for air and go, okay, what am I interested in? And what kind of businesses do I want to build next? And what boards do I want to sit on, that allow me that that opportunity Now.

BENNETT MASON

One final question. This is an AICD podcast, so I have to ask you about the Company Directors Course, the CDC. You recently completed the course. What made you want to do it and what were the major takeaways?

TARYN WILLIAMS

So, I have, if I'm honest, I've been putting off doing it for probably five or six years because it never feels like there's the right time. And I've exited another company, nearly 18 months ago, I was supposed to be on sabbatical. So really, I had actually no good excuses to why I couldn't carve out five days of my life and do it. And so, I enrolled and I thought, okay, look, it's five days. It's going to be super dry. You just need to get through it. “Tick the box” was the mindset I'd gone in with, and I just loved it so much. Like I have told so many people, it was such a richer experience than I expected it to be. I just sort of thought that it was going to be very dry and, you know, a lot of sort of governance and risk and a sort of dry material. But it was delivered in such a fantastic way, and all of the hosts had such great personal stories to share about challenges they'd been through as directors, challenges they'd been through as CEOs, and really helped, I think facilitate great, conversation and discussion within the cohort. So, I met so many interesting people, from really wildly different walks of life, from defence, from completely different walks of life that I probably wouldn't have crossed paths with. And I think it made the experience so firstly, so much more interesting, but secondly, so much more reflective of what being on a board is like. And having those differences of opinions, differences of learnings of backgrounds, to have really robust conversations. So I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would highly recommend anyone go and do it, even if you've been, you know, my background, coming from a non-sort of traditional, pathway to this course. I would highly recommend it.

BENNETT MASON

Taryn, thanks for such a strong endorsement of the CDC and thanks very much for doing the podcast.