The Inspired Unemployed talk to Stellar about business, bro code and breaking the internet
Ahead of taking their fame to the next level with their first TV show, The Inspired Unemployed reveal where they’re at peace with their escalating celebrity.
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Matt Ford and Jack Steele have had a big night out. Make that several big nights out – all in a row.
The duo are having a break after their shoot with Stellar, sitting on a bench in the sun and reflecting on the chaos that ensued. They were partying for Ford’s 28th birthday and, by their own admission, they’re hungover.
“You’re really bad at hangovers,” Ford says, as he glances at Steele. “We know we can’t drink that much because if we do, we’re so unproductive – and we hate being unproductive. I don’t know what I’m saying, or if that made sense at all.”
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Steele, also 28, chimes in: “We had non-stop parties from Wednesday.” (For the record, this interview took place the following Monday). “We haven’t really slept since [then]. We’re both real bad influences on each other. We’re both always keen to go have fun.”
“I’d never really had a birthday party,” Ford admits. “We rented a warehouse. I usually get weirded out [about birthdays]. I like attention, but not when it’s directly on me – like, if I have to earn it. Usually, I get real awkward.”
Steele fires back: “Must be nice to be that popular.”
Surely, they’re putting it on. Ford and Steele may give off an easy air of old-fashioned Aussie larrikinism, but nearly four years after they began posting homemade comedy videos to Instagram about topics such as workplace humour and dating under the guise of a kicky name – The Inspired Unemployed – they’ve become the very definition of popular.
They boast nearly 3.5 million followers across Instagram, TikTok and Facebook; host a Spotify podcast; have launched their own beer; walked the runway for fashion brands; and performed sketches alongside the likes of Margot Robbie and Jason Momoa. Not bad for two best friends and former tradies (Steele was a plasterer, Ford a carpenter) who left high school in Year 11.
Asked what they were like as students, Ford says he was “disinterested”, while Steele says he was “dumb as. I got kicked out of school at the start of Year 11 – well, I got told to leave. I was a smart-arse who didn’t care. I wasn’t a bad kid. I was like, I’m going to go and get a trade. You get so much inspiration on job sites. You go to work, you’re all in it together, you sit at smoko, talking sh*t. Job-site banter is the best banter in the whole world.”
The goofiness with which they approach their craft has led Ford and Steele to a professional zenith, so much so that simply going out in public now proves difficult.
“To tell you the truth, we never go out just one-on-one and have a beer somewhere,” Steele says. “If we did, it would be in the corner of a pub where no-one goes. You’ve got to be really prepared to get people who are drunk coming up to you going, ‘Oh, my God! Let’s get a photo!’
“It can be the best … but it probably changes the dynamic of going out for a casual beer. That’s probably the only downfall; everything else is up. We’re the same, we’re so normal. People come up to you and they think you’re this person. Honestly, I’m just [the same as] you.”
Adds Ford, “It can be intense. They kind of feel like they know ya, which they do ’cause we [talk about] everything. When they come up, you’re like, f**k, have I met this person before?”
Steele elaborates: “They’ll talk about a date you went on, or your parents. You’re like, ‘Are you my cousin?’ But they just listen to your podcast. It’s such a deep level of interaction with your audience.”
Despite the fact their one-time side hustle has grown to an astronomically lucrative level, Ford and Steele still live in their hometown of Kiama on the NSW south coast, in a share house with their mates.
“There are so many group chats,” Steele says. “‘Friends Forever’ is the one on Instagram. And then there are our housemates, which is ‘House Sl*ts’ – which is probably not a good thing to say. There’s one with our financial adviser, called ‘Wall St’.”
Head two doors down the street and you’ll find another share house; open the door, and you’ll find the rest of their mates. When Stellar asks Ford what the collective of friends gets up to, he sets the scene: “If one of us, or a mate, [is] at home and about to go on a date, we’ll literally all be in the lounge room and they’ll do a fashion show.”
Their real-life, good-natured antics often serve as inspiration for their material, particularly on their podcast.
“We end up talking about embarrassing things, like dates and stuff,” Steele adds. “And everyone just really liked that. The realness of how we get nervous to message girls … Girls talk about that stuff a lot, but maybe guys don’t. That vulnerable stuff that guys get a bit scared to talk about? We don’t really care and we open up about it.”
Ford adds wryly, “We get a lot of [dating] questions sent through to the podcast. I don’t know why they want our advice.”
Steele backs him up, pointing out that “we’re both not in relationships. So we shouldn’t be giving advice …”
In many ways, Ford and Steele feel a lot like the next-gen version of Hamish Blake and Andy Lee, the well-established duo who they count among their comedy heroes, and who also forged a friendship early on, after meeting at university. And while Blake and Lee first rose to fame in the pre-social media era via a very different medium – community radio – their subsequently successful foray into television is one that Ford and Steele are prepared to emulate.
“A TV show was our goal before The Inspired Unemployed even started,” Steele tells Stellar.
“That was a long, long goal.”
Next month, they’ll achieve it when they front The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers, a hidden camera prank show on Paramount+ and Network 10.
“There are challenges,” Steele explains. “One of you goes out at a time, and you pretend to be people you’re not: a waitress, golf instructor, massage therapist … And you have an earpiece in, and your other mates tell you what to do and say, everything.”
But while their comedy might seem effortless, the pair admit that it actually takes a lot of work to look this carefree. “When we got the [television] opportunity, we thought, we’re not taking this for granted,” Steele says firmly. “We got, like, improv coaches. We need to make the most of this times a hundred.”
That work hard/play hard attitude has long been a behind-the-scenes hallmark for Ford and Steele, one they applied from their earliest viral videos.
“It took us, like, seven months to get 8000 followers,” Steele says. “Then we went from 8000 followers to 30,000 followers in, like, three days. And that’s when it all changed. We were like, ‘We’re on. Let’s go.’”
Even up until as little as six months ago, he admits, “We were like, this could end. We had that fear, which led us to work harder. Without that fear of having to go back to the job site, it wouldn’t have been what it was.”
One particularly profitable side hustle has been Better Beer, a line of zero-carb, zero-sugar ales (along with a zero-alcohol option), which raked in $10 million of sales within its first five months of operation last year, and in which they each own a 20 per cent stake.
The learning curve, Steele says, was steep. “Obviously, with the brand deals, you have people who help you out – agents and lawyers. We learnt a lot in saying no to a lot of things, and making sure we had creative control,” he admits. “Then the beer, that’s a different ball game – that really shook us into gear a fair bit.”
Better Beer faced legal action earlier this year after rival company Brick Lane Brewing claimed the brand’s retro design and colours could be confused with its own. However, the Federal Court dismissed the case after finding no evidence of the alleged misleading or deceptive conduct.
Says Ford, “The reason we started Better Beer was that we thought, how cool it would be to have our own beer brand. And then, what it’s turned into, we didn’t expect to do that. All of a sudden, it’s gone crazy. It has made us grow up. I feel like I’m an emotional person; I take things personally – whereas business is business. You learn a lot.”
Steele concedes: “It’s all logic. You can’t get emotional with it. You’ve got to build that barrier over time. We’ll be on the phone to our lawyer going, ‘We’re getting sued over this and it’s completely unrealistic’. You could whinge about it …[but] at the end of the day, that [attitude] will get you nowhere. If it’s happened, it’s happened – there’s no point dwelling and stressing. There’s no point.”
So do Ford and Steele feel like they’ve made it?
“You try to process it and you are grateful,” Steele says. “You want to sit back and look at everything – you’re always growing. I feel like you need to go to India by yourself and sit back and do nothing. Processing it is one of the hardest things for me. It becomes normal.”
Which is why, Ford says, they are grateful to be navigating fame side-by-side, and that they have one another “to, like, vent to, or whatever. We’re lucky we have each other to chat about sh*t with.”
The Inspired Unemployed (Impractical) Jokers premieres in August on Paramount+ and Network 10
Stellar is out today in The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (Victoria), The Sunday Mail (Queensland) and Sunday Mail (South Australia)
Originally published as The Inspired Unemployed talk to Stellar about business, bro code and breaking the internet
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