Getting down to business with The Inspired Unemployed
Matt Ford and Jack Steele’s irreverent skits and larrikin humour as The Inspired Unemployed have earned them a rabid fandom on social media. Now, they’re turning it into a business empire with a beer company, a podcast, and a TV show. Step into their office.
“I never wanted to be a builder or be a tradie,” says Matt Ford, leaning back on a long sofa in a spacious house in North Bondi. “My dad was a bricklayer and I’d just seen how hard it was.” Jack Steele nods in agreement as he finishes off the acai bowl he’s eating. “All the jobs we really knew existed were teachers and tradies.”
Ford and Steele — both from small towns near Kiama on the south coast of New South Wales, with middling grades and parents doing trades — began their employed lives doing the things they swore they never wanted to. For Steele, now 29, picking up a trade looked like the only option after he wasn’t welcomed back to school for Year 11. He landed a work-experience stint on a job site, which convinced him to give his education a real shot. “I told everyone ‘I‘m going kill it’,” he says. “That was three days in. Then the principal called me up and was like, ‘If you don’t leave, I’ll do my best to make you leave’.” That was that.
Likewise, Ford — who is a year younger than Steele — dropped out in Year 11, picked up a landscaping job, then a dead-end gig working for an online surf shop in Bali. Before long, the road had taken him back to the place he never wanted to be. “Everyone was pressuring me to do an apprenticeship,” he says, “and I was just about to start when Jack called me and said, ‘Let’s go to Europe and we’ll work towards something we want to do for the rest of our lives’.”
Ford, nicknamed “Falcon”, and Steele are better known to their more than four million social media followers as The Inspired Unemployed — a name that sprang from their status as travelling former tradies with an itch to do something different with their lives. Through a combination of energetic Aussie humour, a high threshold for embarrassment and a secret fountain of ambition, the boys struck gold.
“They made the pact,” says high-school friend Dom Littrich of the duo’s start in 2019: “‘We’re going to have a crack at doing these videos every day for 100 days’. They were over in France, staying in the Alps, and they just went for it. We were all back home like, ‘Oh, have they lost their minds? Are they good?’.”
Turns out they were.
Jump cut to 2023 and the pair are on nationally televised ads with former pro basketball star Shaquille O’Neal, doing skits with Margot Robbie, are co-owners of disruptive alcohol brand Better Beer, podcast hosts with an exclusive Spotify deal, and soon-to-be television stars with a new eight-part show coming to Paramount ANZ later this year, the details of which are still under wraps. They spend as much time in their home towns or doing business in Sydney as they do in the States, Japan, Bali or Europe.
“It’s so hard to predict, but we’re always travelling each week,” says Ford of their typical schedule these days. Considering I ran into them trackside at this year’s Melbourne Grand Prix where they had just filmed a skit with Daniel Ricciardo, it’s easy to see what they mean. “We’re also doing a TV show at the moment,” Ford adds. “We’re properly that busy, we’re just so stressed out sometimes.”
It’s remarkable to see how far these two friends have come in just a few years. Since 2019, when The Inspired Unemployed were first featured in a shoot for this magazine and which Steele recalls as “the biggest shit we’ve done”, they have become two of Australia’s most successful and well-liked personalities. At the Grand Prix, as we walked a short distance in search of a quiet corner of the Red Bull area where we were watching the race, they were stopped five or six times. Sometimes it’s by fans who they greet with a warm “Where are you from?”. Other times it’s by people such as Olympic snowboarder Scotty James, AFL player Christian Petracca, pop singer Ruel or 2022 Australian of the Year Dylan Alcott. At this point, these public figures know Ford and Steele well — they’ve seen them many times at events such as this in the few years since they broke out.
With that profile and fame there has been plenty of opportunity, but also anxiety, pressure and the risk of burnout. Casual followers of Ford and Steele might be surprised to hear that the expectations can weigh on them. After all, the boys built their reputations as lighthearted larrikins who do far more surfing than desk work. But for a group with “unemployed” in their name, the reality is that they are now more akin to serial entrepreneurs constantly adding new projects to an already full plate. A quick glimpse at their current roles reads more like a resumé you would be proud to look back on in your twilight years: beer company owners, podcast hosts, social-media stars, and creators of their own television show.
These new opportunities also mean a lot of work. “It’s such different work. It’s not physical,” says Steele. “And people will be like, ‘They don’t fucking work’, but honestly, I reckon we work twice, if not three times harder, than what we did doing a 40-hour week on the job site.”
A recent day in the life looked something like this: start about 8am with a production meeting for their podcast, record an episode, do a media appearance or two, jump on a Zoom call with Paramount directors and producers to talk television scripts, hop onto another one with lawyers to go through some Better Beer business, then they’ll edit a video that needs to be uploaded urgently and send some scripts they’ve been working on off to their manager, before eventually clocking off about 8pm. Sometimes this will be in Sydney, where their podcast studio is located. Sometimes it’s in Kiama, where they also have an office. Sometimes they’ll have to fly to the brewery in Griffith to trial new flavours.
“I think everyone has a perception that the boys are pretty loose and, you know, would hate to do a meeting,” says Nick Cogger, the chief executive and co-owner of Better Beer alongside Steele and Ford. “But it probably couldn’t be further from the truth … They’d be 100 per cent busier than what anyone thinks they are. It’s not just all drinking beers and surf trips.”
Don’t get it wrong though: it’s not all work and no play. The fruits of their labour have been bountiful and stem from an almost clinical business sense that has guided them to say no to offers that involved slapping their faces on products for a one-off pay cheque in favour of starting their own projects.
“Why pump someone’s tyres up if you can pump your own up?” asks Steele, a question that defines The Inspired Unemployed’s rapid rise from funny-guy influencers to savvy business operators.
With the launch of Better Beer in 2021, Ford and Steele took their first real steps into leveraging their following for more than promoting someone else’s product. The pair struck up an easy friendship with Nick Cogger — founder of Torquay Beverage Company — after working on a few paid videos for its alcoholic kombucha brand K.Booch. So when Ford and Steele approached Cogger for advice on launching a beer company of their own, it wasn’t totally out of the blue.
With his expertise and their platform, Better Beer’s zero-carb beer capitalised on the health trend that has buoyed other low-carb alternatives such as seltzer to quickly become a disrupter in the industry. In the first six months of operation, Better Beer generated $10 million in retail sales. In the second quarter of this financial year, that figure passed $50 million and Cogger expects total revenue to hit $45 million for the full financial year. The brand has introduced four new verticals — zero-alcohol, ginger beer, mid-strength and an arvo pale ale — and it’s now going global, with expansion plans imminent in New Zealand, followed by California and the UK next year.
“Your first perception of an influencer or celebrity is that they stick a name to a brand and hope for the best,” says Cogger. “But they’re across all the detail, especially when we were starting up in that first six months. There’s a lot on the line for them because this is their baby.”
And in terms of pumping up their tyres? Steele and Ford each own a 21 per cent stake in Better Beer, Cogger owns 20 per cent, ASX-listed craft drinks company Mighty Craft owns 37 per cent, and there is one other minority investor.
As co-workers, Cogger describes Ford and Steele as perfectionists, constantly examining the particulars and coming up with ideas. Steele, he says, is the more intense of the two. “He has ideas flowing through his head that he needs to tell everyone at that minute. That could be when he’s in the bathroom. We’ve had texts and phone calls from when he’s in the shower.” Ford, on the other hand, writes his ideas down and reveals them all at once. “They’re both very driven,” says Cogger.
Motivation may never be an issue, but the ability to navigate the world of business has been hard won. “It was our first-ever meeting,” Ford recalls of an early brand deal, “And they said ‘We’ve got this deal, it’s probably around five’. And I was like, ‘What? 500 bucks?’. And she was like, ‘No, five grand’. Jack was keeping his cool, but when we walked off, he’s like ‘Now she‘ll probably pay us less’.” Steele adds: “I said ‘She’s going to think we’re happy with 500 bucks, you idiot!’.”
At the time, the guys had about 30,000 followers, but they didn’t yet know what that was really worth: $5000, as Ford estimates it, would have taken them five weeks to earn on the job site. “That moment made us realise what the money’s like in the industry,” says Steele. “There’s heaps of money here, obviously.” About 1.7 million extra Instagram followers later, Steele describes the brand deals they do now as “pretty decent”.
Their growth and business savvy have earned Steele and Ford financial freedom while still in their twenties. If they wanted, they could fly to Jamaica next week, as Steele suggests, or rent a modern, stylish Airbnb in North Bondi for more than a month while they work on their television show with some friends, as they’re doing right now. And even though they could ditch their coastal uniform of Dickies work pants and casual T-shirts, decking themselves out in the latest designer fashion is not their style. But, as Steele points out, they could afford it.
“We are so stingy with materialistic items,” he says. “We don’t buy anything. We bought sunnies in the airport the other day and we were like, ‘Oh, that was fucking wild’.” “Everyone changes,” says Steele, of how money can affect your interactions. “But I feel like our morals and stuff didn’t change. We still do the same shit. We just stay in nicer Airbnbs, to be honest.” Adds Ford, sheepishly: “It’s been nice to be able to pay for dinners for people, and, you know, help out.”
Although clearly not easy for them to talk about, the guys remain as candid when discussing this as anything else, acknowledging their success with the same open-book sincerity that makes their podcast and YouTube videos so endearing.
Anyone who follows The Inspired Unemployed knows there’s more than just Falcon and Jack. Their friendship group is now almost like an extended family. There’s Dom, Bill, Grant, Callum, Liam — all the boys they lived with in Kiama; a place, I notice when Steele and Ford scratch the fresh ink, each has commemorated with a tattoo.
Do they feel the responsibility to bring these friends they think of as brothers along for the ride? “It’s hard. We started this whole thing, we script and film and edit and everything, and then we get our mates in to help and they have such a big impact,” says Steele, “And it was awkward for a while, at the start, like, how do you start paying them? But they’re just so happy to do it, and then we’re happy to pay them. I mean, it sounds so fucking bad when you put money into it.”
“We’ve got our big crew of mates”, says Littrich, their high-school friend. “They’ve always included us with everything and kept us in the loop with stuff. If any brand deals came along where there’s the opportunity to get us in there, they’d always think of us.” That’s how Littrich found himself in Los Angeles shooting a betting commercial with Shaq, for example.
But as he explains it, what Steele and Ford have done for their friends is more than just loop them in, pay the bill or fund their skydiving licences — although they did that, too. They’ve opened their eyes to a world beyond trades and teaching. They’ve inspired them.
“Watching them leave their jobs and focus on the videos gave me a lot of motivation to go my own way,” says Littrich, who has just released a debut album as part of Sydney band Pacific Avenue and also gained about 130,000 followers across his personal and Big Twisty accounts on Instagram. Similar things have happened for most of the group. Grant quit his trade to become a full-time videographer, Bill is travelling the world, Liam is joining Ford, Steele and Littrich on the upcoming TV show, and Callum works for Better Beer full-time. Steele’s sister Bonnie is the boys’ executive assistant, too.
But this group of friends is more than just a supporting cast for skits by Steele and Ford. They are a safety net that keeps them grounded, keeps them sane. “We’re definitely a bunch of sensitive guys,” says Littrich. “Often we’ll find ourselves all lying on one person’s bed chatting about any issues we’ve got in our lives and talking to each other through breakups or how to talk to a girl. It feels like we’re all a bit of a family.”
“My biggest prized possession is my mates,” says Ford. Steele nods: “It’s honestly like therapy.”
As any successful person finds, the good invites the bad, and learning to deal with it makes all the difference. Of everything new that has come since The Inspired Unemployed broke through, Steele says the expectations have been the worst.
“Dude, I’ve fucking been having panic attacks,” he says of the past few weeks. “It’s all coming from so many angles, there are deadlines, you’re multi-tasking so much in the matter of half an hour, you can feel your brain cooking, then I just go into a mental breakdown and I’m just lying on the floor — like, deep breaths.”
“I remember the end of last year,” Ford says. “I was fucking done. Well not done, but like, we needed to go to Japan to try to get away from it all. When it stops becoming fun, it’s a bit scary because it’s such a fun thing.”
Ford and Steele know this is what they signed up for though, and they do love it, but it’s a life where you can have an unimaginably good time one day and the next you just want to escape — from emails, from decisions, from well-meaning fans approaching you every five minutes, from the algorithm constantly demanding you stay relevant — and you simply can’t. Instead, you have to learn to manage it, and that’s what Steele and Ford have done, and it’s part of the reason their pivot from influencers reliant on brand deals and engagement to entrepreneurs has been so important.
Better Beer is growing, and while Ford and Steele know it’s a long-term play for them as owners and they’ve been putting any earnings back into the company, they did just earn their first dividend. The Inspired Unemployed podcast contract with Spotify nets them “a very nice pay cheque” for each season, and hopes are high for the television show as well. This diversified revenue stream means they have the freedom to step away from the daily grind of keeping up with the algorithm and endless brand deals.
“Now we just say no to everything but the big ones,” says Steele. “We might do one big one every three months, sometimes four, sometimes six months. That’s enough to not be a sellout.”
Even with unsponsored skits, the pace has slowed. Back in 2020, for example, The Inspired Unemployed posted multiple videos a week to Instagram, sometimes multiple in a day. Now, the rate is more like three a month.
“We said ‘Let’s tone it back, focus on what really matters and then just make videos that we know are A-grade’,” says Steele. “I swear since we did that, I feel so much better. Our whole goal is to just only do what’s fun. That is helping so much and we’ve got the love back.”
This considered, fun-focused approach is also helping them with that most Aussie of afflictions, tall poppy syndrome. “Everyone backs you when you’re an underdog, which is the Australian way,” says Ford, “Now that things are starting to do a bit better and whatever, you do start to feel it a bit.” It’s a unique paradox. When your success stems from being in the limelight, but you know your fanbase can easily tire, how do you move forward?
“I think the only rational way to treat any of it is as a ride that can and will stop one day,” says Hamish Blake, one half of another famous Aussie double act. “You learn pretty early you’re not going to please all the people all the time, because no one in history has, so you be grateful you get the chance to make some people laugh, and if you get the chance again, you repeat the cycle.”
Blake, and his on-air partner Andy Lee, have become mentors of sorts to Ford and Steele. “We have both their numbers, and Hamish will just message us randomly, like a mate,” says Ford giddily of the relationship with their childhood idol. “You know when you’re messaging a girl and you get nervous about what you’re messaging back? I’m still like that with him.”
For his part, Blake is humble. “The only thing I’ve really been able to offer them is a reminder that what they’re doing isn’t easy, and they’re doing it so well,” he says.
It’s taken A few burnouts, and a lot of peaks, but for now, Ford and Steele have figured out the key to their success. Clearly, they want their creative pursuits to always be at their best, but instead of struggling under the heft of those expectations, they’ve changed their definition of a win.
“The real goal for this show we’re doing,” Ford says as an example, “What we’re saying to all our mates is, ‘As long as we’re having fun, that’s all that matters’. We obviously want it to do well and get good ratings and shit but the goal is: each day if we’re having fun then we’re doing our job. Say our goal is for it to be the best TV show and it isn’t — which it’s probably not going to be — but if we have fun then whatever comes from that, we’ve already won.”
An audience can feel when performers’ hearts aren’t in it; focusing on their enjoyment not only relieves their stress and own expectations, but it also makes for a better product. “A lady came up to us at the airport the other day,” says Steele of a recent interaction, “She was like ‘When I’m going through really bad times in my life, I’ll lay in my bed, watch your videos and cry’.”
That’s the power of what these blokes from Kiama can do. They broke through via a candid, unfiltered sense of humour that radiated through our phone screens and made us smile and laugh. No matter whether it’s in our headphones, on our televisions or in a beer can, that joy will always be the most important thing they can offer us. The good news is, they’re just getting started.
Charlie Calver is GQ Australia’s Head of Brand.
A version of this story originally appeared in the June/July 2023 issue of GQ Australia, available exclusively in The Australian June 23, with the title “Getting down to business with The Inspired Unemployed”
PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photography by Rob Tennent
Styling by Emma Kalfus
Grooming by Madison Voloshin
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