Alright, let's dive into this fun chat! Our main man here is Andy, a former PWC employee who decided to take a leap of faith into the world of videography. He talks about his journey from being a part of the corporate world to becoming a creative entrepreneur.

Andy shares how he didn't feel completely satisfied at PWC, despite the prestige and security. He felt like he was living someone else's dream, not his own. So, he decided to follow his passion for storytelling through videography. He admits it wasn't an easy decision, especially considering the financial implications and the fear of throwing away a great opportunity. But he was determined to do something he loved.

He also shares some valuable advice for anyone feeling unsure about their career path. He emphasizes the importance of making your own decisions, not just following what others say. If you're not happy, it's worth having a conversation with your team leader or someone you trust. But ultimately, the decision should be yours.

Andy's story is a testament to the power of following your passion and making your own path. He's still learning and growing in his new field, but he's happier and more fulfilled. And that's what really matters, right? So, if you're feeling stuck, remember Andy's story. It's never too late to chase your dreams! 🚀

Thanks for jumping on, man.

Like I said, especially at this hour in the morning.

Ben shared your background and, I thought, 'Oh, this is

interesting.' Kind of everything, from pizza making to professional

services, and now video production.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do a bit of freelance video, and I work for Lululemon as well.

Just like a retail assistant with them, and then I do my video as I

just pursue that outside of my working hours, I'm also started a wine label.

So fingers in every poem.

Man, you're a man of many talents.

Yeah.

Good on you.

H ow does one go about starting

a wine label?

So one of my mates, he studies video culture, his family owns a venues

growning up around wine his whole life.

And he got some differing ideas to his dad and said, 'All right, I'm gonna

do what I reckon would be good here'.

Approached me in another mate and said, 'Hey lads, I've got an idea'.

He did paper about like wine, the consumerism of wine and how different

elements tie into it .So, he was thinking, 'I need to capitalize on

these elements, ' because he just feels like a lot of traditional

winemakers or labels don't do that.

Man, that sounds like a whole another interview.

I've myself noticed how the kind of boutique beer breweries have taken

off, and lot of kind of fun youthful stuff happening in that space.

Is it something along those lines?

If I reflect on wine brands in comparison, they're quite almost targeting an older

demographic and a bit stale . Maybe that just speaks to the top of the difference

between wine drinkers and beer drinkers.

Yeah, somewhat like I definitely think there's an element of that.

It's mainly just targeting new varieties, in a sense.

I think overall tastes change a lot in regards to wine in the last couple years.

People are moving away from those full-bodied reds . So it's just

capitalizing on those trends and trying to find what the next thing.

New grape variety.

Yeah.

Start from first principles.

Good stuff.

That sounds like

a fun project.

Yeah, it's exciting.

Obviously, there was so much rain, this year, though, so

everything got delayed heaps.

But it's on its way now, which is cool.

Cool man.

And so, you're in marketing in a sense with your video

production stuff?

In a sense, yeah.

I make videos , so I'm just building up my client base at the moment.

But one of my mates, he owns a gym.

Do you know Fit Stop?

I don't.

Actually, no.

It's like F 45, but it's one of those friends gym side to it

for his Fit Stop specifically.

And then through him, I've been in contact with the national team, so

they're running an event on Sunday, which I'll do some content for.

And then, I also do a bit of video work for a social media management

company and they work specifically with a lot of fitness studios, et cetera.

Which is cool, guess a lot of the work I've done so far is in that fitness space,

which like, if remember earlier what I said about the Lakers is that kind of

aligns with where I want to be going.

I'm shooting random stuff.

I like to think of it.

I actually did get a new camera the other day ,cuz I always enjoyed doing

it, but all throughout school and just when I was a kid, but I never really

thought of pursuing it seriously.

And having ethnic parents, that was also not exactly an option.

But then, I got to a point where I just thought, 'Oh, I hate my job.

I don't want wake up in the morning.

I wanna do something I actually care about'.

So then I thought, whatever, I'm young enough now, I'll do it.

It doesn't work out.

Yeah.

Man, what a cool

story.

It takes a lot of bravery.

It's PwC, we'll talk about that later, but, that's the holy grail

of aspirational career path, particularly for a lot of students.

And so to decide, 'No, I'm gonna do my own thing.

Go out on my own.' And that's impressive!

Yeah, no, I did think when, when Ben asked me to if I

wanted to ask these questions.

I thought, 'You sure you want me, mate?'

Hopefully, one day we'll look back on this recording and, you'll

tell the story of buying a new camera and going around doing small gym videos — the

origin stories of getting to the LA Lakers video and setting yourself up nicely

for that.

Yeah.

No, I figured it was a bit like do you know who Casey Neistat is?

Yeah.

I remember just him a few years ago, watched a video and him, and

he was just talking about when he moved to New York or something,

he was broke, washing dishes.

And he just maxed out his credit card buying one of the Mac with iMovie on it.

Started doing that and look where he is now.

Yep, that's right.

And I think if you look at all the people that have got to somewhere

amazing, there's always that kind of struggle, origin story.

How did you come to make the decision to leave PwC?

As I said, that's not easy, and truth be told, most people don't.

There's this concept of the pinstripe prison, which is actually a book.

If you haven't read it, you should.

But most people get trapped in these careers that they don't necessarily love.

And they like the money.

They 're leveraged up, got a big mortgage, got the commitment,

and they're often miserable, but they just can't break the cycle.

They can't get out of it.

So you've done that.

How'd you get to a point where you made that decision?

I guess there are a couple elements in it for me.

So, for a big part of it was, I'd grown up my whole life having this

mindset and grade of, 'Oh, you go to uni, then once you finish uni

,you go out and you get a real job'.

A real job was always something that was like in an office

or working for someone else.

Just that really typical nine to five.

And anything outside of that just meant that, not that you were

drop kick, but, ' Oh that's not how you should be doing things'.

And I think that was like something I got from my parents and then something

from school as well, where it's like, 'Yeah, to be successful you need

to get really good grades and be a really high achiever academically'.

Which I just don't think is the case in the real world at all.

Like Richard Branson, for example.

He's actually on paper, probably a bit of an idiot, but look where he is now.

And so, yeah, I went on and I did that and I got my job at PwC, and

then I was there for two years and I just thought, 'This is awful'.

And all through that first year, I just thought, 'What the hell?

This is not what I expected at all.' And then two things happened.

So one of them, I met my girlfriend, she went to uni for a semester.

Hated it, dropped out.

and, she was just working like basically full-time at a dessert place.

And I remember when I first met her, that whole old mindset still kicked in.

I thought, 'Oh, what, she didn't go to uni or she doesn't work in an office.

And then, there was a bit of a light bulb moment.

I thought, 'Whoa, actually, hang on.

I went to uni, I work in an office, and I hate my job'.

She didn't do any of that, and she loves her job.

So who am I to judge someone else who has just taken a completely different path?

So that was like a really big wake up call for me.

And then another thing, one of my mates actually, he very sadly passed away

when he was doing the Larapinta trail.

And he was super young, really fit, and just yeah, had heat

stroke and then dropped dead.

So that was like a massive shock and really had me evaluating if

that could happen to me, is that something that I want to be do?

Am I doing something that I want to be doing?

Am I excited about every day?

And the answer to that was just 'No'.

So, from basically that moment on, it took me a couple months,

but I decided I wanted to leave.

And then from there, it was about just opening up what's

next, what am I gonna do?

And there we go.

I didn't just say, 'No, I'm out and totally quit'.

But I certainly just went and said, 'I'm gonna forget any other job,

anything that'll pay my bills for now.

And then once that's set, locked in stone or set in, I'm just gonna leave'.

Hey, that's so impressive!

I feel like this is the perfect origin story of a really cool outcome, and

incredibly self-aware of you too, to reflect on your friends sadly passing

away and asking those tough questions.

Like I said, like we're starting to interview a bunch of grads like

this, and one of the questions we ask is, you had your time again

is there anything you'd change?

And often the answer is no, or they just haven't thought about it.

Clearly, the stuff they're not enjoying . It's almost like they're not admitting

it to themselves, whereas you just had the headspace to step back and really

think about that hard and make some tough

decisions.

There's probably a lot of people, and especially young grads, when you ask

them those sorts of questions, they want to come up as really impressive and

that they care heaps about their work.

So I feel like a lot of them are just gonna say, ' Oh no.

I'm totally happy with everything I've done that's led me to this point, and

I really want to be here, et cetera.

Which for some people, yeah, I think that's true.

But, obviously myself, I've left PwC, I know Ben left Deloitte and

I think he just realized quicker that he didn't enjoy it at all.

I even remember like if I look back at my time at PwC and I wish there

was a million things I said that I didn't or did do that I didn't do.

Like one of the first, one of my first weeks there, cuz PWCs grad

program started earlier, it started in December as opposed to March.

And so I just really offhand mentioned to someone, 'Oh yeah, one

of my mates is starting at Deloitte.

He gets one more summer off'.

That would've been cool, cause I basically finished uni, obviously

COVID, my exams got delayed a bit.

Finished uni like November the 30th or something.

And then I started at PwC December 7th, so I barely had a break.

And so I mentioned that to someone who then went and actually told

my resource manager I'd said that.

And I said that as a really offhand comment.

And at the end of it.

I was like, 'Ah, whatever, I start getting paid earlier, so that's fine.

And then, at a Friday drinks or something she started having one of those jokes with

me, ' like, Oh, I heard you said this.

I bet, you wish you had another summer off'.

She said it with a joking time, but I could tell she meant it.

And it was like a really disparaging comment to make.

Which like I should say as well, wasn't a reflection on everyone at

PwC, but I look back on that and I think, 'Oh, I should've just stood

after myself and said, you know what?

Yes.

I actually really would have liked another summer off because I'm 20 years old.

I've just started full-time work.

Like lot of people don't start until they're like 26.

So, yeah, I really would've liked some extra time off'.

But at the time, like I was saying, I didn't have that extra perspective and

I didn't have that sort of mindset.

It was just, 'No, I need to try and impress everyone I can as quick as I can.'

No like I said before, incredibly self-aware.

How did you navigate the resignation with PwC?

How did that conversation come up

? Andy Lee: It was a bit of, so one of my

the time, a bit after my mate died.

We just had his funeral and all that, and then we were on this job.

It was just getting busy.

And just my head wasn't in at.

And the manager on the job noticed, so she called me and

just said, 'Hey what's going on?

I've seen a lot of progression from you in the last, from the first time

we worked together to now, suddenly it just seems like things aren't right.

So what's the explanation?' And I just straight up said, 'Yeah, look, I don't

know if I want to be here anymore.

I didn't know I really whether to want to delve those details of what had

happened, and it was just a bit fresh.

So then from there, I just had a conversation with

my team leader in a sense.

And then I just, yeah, I said to him, 'Look, here's what's happened mentally.

I just don't know if I want to be here.

I feel like it's not something I'm passionate about.

I don't really care about my work'.

And basically said all of this, like a good month and a half before I

actually resigned, which in hindsight I probably wouldn't have done.

But at the time, I just did not care.

And I feel like I should have said that then resigned.

But I waited a bit.

But yeah, that, so that was the initial conversation.

And then I guess, like, I've just said that I shouldn't have done that,

but it then also was on his radar, so he knew,' Andy's not enjoying this.

He is looking at moving somewhere else', and I guess it meant for them, they

were a bit more aware about where my headspace was and what I was thinking.

And then, so when the call, when I did give him the call and said, ' Hey Joe,

I'm just letting you know I'm about to hand in my formal resignation and gonna

give my months notice or whatever it is'.

So yeah, that was it.

I will say my team leader was very supportive in that decision.

The first time I fully opened up to him and said,' I'm not enjoying it.

I don't wanna do this', it wasn't a matter of, 'Oh, we've invested all this time and

money into you' .It was just straight up, and I didn't expect this from him at all.

Not that he wasn't a very lovely man, it was just, I'd always thought of

him as a straight PwC shooter, about his instant response If you're not

enjoying it, is there anything that I can do to help that within this firm?

And if it's not within this firm, what do you want to do?

And you should probably look at pursuing that instead.'

So yeah, was very open and receptive to that.

And then that gave me a bit more confidence, and a bit later I

just said to him, 'Hey I'm out'.

Why do you, would the benefit of hindsight, think you shouldn't

have disclosed as early as you did?

Did you, did people react to that or people treated you differently?

No, I don't think they treated me differently, or at least

not on the outside, but I think, the cone of silence at any firm

is never that gonna be just that.

So then, word gets out, and then people ask you, 'Oh, hey

what are you thinking of doing?

'. Because I think, in the manager chat,

this person's thinking of leaving.'

But although I do think as well, it was like, another thing I

would've done differently, I didn't exactly hide how unhappy I was.

Like if a client would do something that would piss me off, I'd just

be in the office going, 'Ohhhh...'.

Things like that.

Whereas a lot of other people were very like stoic and calm, whereas that, to

me, I'd just gotten over the hill and went, 'No, I cannot deal with this.

Just, it's not that hard.

Why does it have to be this difficult?'

I don't know.

I've never been on the client side of it.

So, to be honest , that's probably poor judgment from me to just straight

up say that, but I didn't think, it seemed too hard when I had asked

for something and they would give me everything related to a transaction

except the one thing I asked for.

How did you get this?

But not just the invoice itself.

yeah.

But yeah I guess to me it was just if I was going to disclose that information, I

should have done it sooner to when I left.

The counter argument would be that.

You did the right thing.

You gave your employer time to discuss and rectify.

So, that openness and honesty is usually appreciated from the employer, at least

should be.

Yeah.

And I think it was by like my team leader, but even in that regard , like

a lot of people when they leave PwC, a partner will try and jump in and have all

these last minute meetings with them and they'll try and convince you to stay.

That wasn't the case with me, which you can either take as a me being

really bad at my job, which I hope wasn't the case, or B) I think they

knew that because I wasn't like moving to a rival firm or wasn't

moving in anywhere else in accounting.

I think they just knew, 'Oh, there's no point in us trying to convince

him to stay in accounting cuz he clearly doesn't wanna be there'.

Yeah, totally.

And do you remember the first moment when you started to think

to yourself that perhaps of this career path that PwC isn't right for

you?

I thought that within two weeks.

It was after that conversation I had with my RM and she was ringing

me about wanting an extra three months off or my last summer off.

That was just instantly I thought, is this where I want to be?

But at the time I was 20, I was about to turn 21, and to me, like you were

saying earlier, it was that holy grail.

I was in this great job cuz I'd done my summer vacation program there the year

before and I actually quite enjoyed it.

And then, that's a bit of a shock.

I don't really know why that's a bad thing to say or actually at the time I thought,

'Oh no, I've committed a cardinal sin'.

I shouldn't have said anything like that.

But now I look back on it and if I were in that position, if I was still

at PwC and I grad said that to me, I would've gone, ' Hey, fair enough'.

I don't know why our program starts so early.

So yeah, within that first kind of week - two weeks was when I thought,

'Is this for me?', I was so young and I was in this position that's really

hard to attain for a lot of people.

So I just thought,' Ohh it must be a me problem'.

I'm gonna stick it out.

Then as I like went along, the timeline got shorter and shorter went from,

'Oh, I'm just gonna stay here until I can get like a manager bonus'.

Or, 'I'm gonna be here for a couple years until I can move to investment banking'.

' I'm just gonna a senior promotion then'.

That'll be on my resume forever.' I'll be, I was a senior'.

' Oh, I'm gonna be here until the end of the year'.

'Oh no, I'm out now'.

Yeah.

No, well done.

What you're describing there is the archetypal pinstripe prison pathway

where you get good grades at school, you go to uni, almost out of a sense

of obligation, study the right things.

Not because you have a passion for it, but because it's the expected path, or

it's using up your eight your entry score.

I didn't even study accounting.

I studied finance at uni.

I always thought I was gonna be this big investment banker.

And then one season of one year of one busy season at PwC working late every

night, getting in early every morning.

And I immediately realized, 'No, I'd actually hate being an investment banker'.

I don't care how much money they can pay me or I could make here because if this

is my lifestyle, that's not worth it.

Yeah, no.

It's again, you realizing your stuff well before most people do.

And, I guess the other thing, I'm interested, when you finally made

the decision to move on from PwC.

How did friends and family react?

My friends were thrilled.

They'd been telling me for months beforehand, 'You need to

get out, you need to get out'.

I have a mate, he is a very good videographer.

And he was super encouraging.

All their parents as well were very like, ' Yeah, just get out, Andy.' On

the flip side of that, my parents were pretty unhappy with that decision.

Which I think, for them being immigrants coming to a different country and

then having to work their way from nothing, it was like, 'Oh, he's just

giving up this really good job'.

And I certainly grappled with that a lot.

I think the reason it took me so long was because I felt like, am I throwing

away everything my parents worked for?

And then as well the cleaner at our office.

He was like an immigrant from the Serbian war back in the nineties or something.

And he was always just so happy to be there every day.

And so I always thought to myself, 'Look how happy he is.

And I'm in this job that a lot of people would consider to be

much better, and I am so unhappy.

Am I just being like an ungrateful And then like the same thing I

said with, 'Am I just throwing away my parents opportunities here?'.

But then, the other side of that, I also had that realization of...

there's a reason my parents came to this country to try

and get better opportunities.

And it's almost a waste in itself for me to just stay and do

something that I absolutely hate.

Because if I was born in China, that's what I would probably would've been doing.

Yeah, totally.

I guess the more important question is that do you feel like you're happier now?

Made the difficult call?

Yeah.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

I think, a big part of that is I actually love my job now

,which I never thought I'd say.

I think financially it's tougher which is just always gonna be the

case if you're not on a salary.

And there are a lot of moments of self-doubt when I'm recording videos and

editing the footage to back together.

And I think, 'Oh geez, it doesn't look how I pictured it in my head, or It

doesn't look how I storyboarded it out.'

This is getting really tough and I've not been doing this for long

enough to know the ins and outs and how to make everything the

way I exactly want it to be.

So, there's certainly that self-doubt and questioning my decision.

And I wake up every day and I think,' Did I make the right call?' But

fundamentally, I love my job at Lululemon.

I love the people I work with, the community that it has.

And even there, we've got a woman, she was a lawyer in America for a couple

years ,and she was making very good money, thought she realized how much

she hated it, and moved to Adelaide.

So, that's just such a good environment to be in.

And that just contributes overall to my happiness.

I've got much more flexibility in my life in the sense of I can, it's

easier for me to swap shifts around if I need a day off here and there.

Like for example, this Saturday I was meant to be shooting for someone.

I had a shift scheduled.

If I was at PwC, I'd have to be taking leave or something.

But here it was just messaging people who weren't working and they said, 'Yeah,

I can cover this part of the shift.

I can come with this part of the shift', and then boom, I'm

freed up again for Saturday.

So it's just the greater flexibility, and the more positive environment

or one that aligns more with me.

It sounds like you're really enjoying

the video production stuff as

well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've loved doing it my whole life.

I'd never done it on a professional scale or a properly professional scale.

So to be in that zone now and really trying to pursue it.

It's very exciting.

It's scary.

It's super scary.

But I think if I'd stay at PwC and then incur all these financial

commitments while I was at that job, that would've been really scary as well.

Cause I would've thought, 'Oh, I can't leave now.

I have a mortgage, or I can't leave now.

I've got kids'.

I think one of my mates said, there's a very good, it's ' Yeah, leaving your

job's a huge risk, but so is staying in your job for 10 years, doing something

you don't like because it just means you're gonna take that risk a lot later.

So it's not a matter, it's just a matter of when not if you take the risk'.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And there's untold benefits to you just being generally happier and less stressed?

Yeah.

Day to day.

It's hard to quantify that, but those years of just of being an

environment that's not good for you.

They take their toll, the effects accumulate pretty quickly.

It's hard to realize that when you are young, but 10 years of that,

and you look at yourself in the mirror one day and you're like,

'Gosh, what's, what have I become?

This is not what I had planned'.

Brilliant.

We'll come back to the video stuff a bit later.

I guess for the benefit of a lot of students who don't know a

whole lot about PwC- two parts.

What do they actually do, and then, what did your role involve

? Andy Lee: Yeah.

However you see, they're obviously a professional services firm.

I think they're overarching, considered an accounting firm.

In Adelaide, there were a couple arms and then they opened

this big skilled service hubs.

There're now actually two offices in Adelaide.

There's one, which is was the one I was in.

So they have audit, tax and advisory, and then a consulting arm.

And then the big one in Rundle Mall, I don't actually know, I know they've

got heaps of different business units, but they essentially support all the

other business units around Australia.

But they just, yeah, they provide professional services.

I don't actually really know what they did in tax, in consulting.

It looks like they just made PowerPoints all day.

Which I think is a stereotype or stuff.

It is a stereotype cuz that's what everyone asks , 'Oh, do

you know any consultants?'.

But then, every day in the office, that is what they would be doing all day.

I was in, not at PwC, but spreadsheets and PowerPoint.

So yeah, I was in auditing, basically.

So, I was auditing financial statements, and there's a lot of

different branches of auditing.

You can have internal auditing, which doing a lot of controls,

testing and implementing plans for companies to be able to externally

audit their financial statements.

There's transformation auditing, which I don't actually know anything about.

I just know we had people that did it.

But the big one for PwC is external audit, which is what I was in.

So as I'm saying, that's auditing people's financial statements.

If we go back to the conversation earlier, if I'm doing like testing of

a revenue, for example I might just pick 10 random transactions, or was

always way more, but let's just say 10.

And I'd say, 'Hey, for this transaction, I need to see the invoice.

I need to see the bank showing money coming in.

I need to see like a contract, which often was the invoice.

And I need to see, your the shipping documents to show delivery of the item or

the service get that provides revenue'.

And so we would then document all of those, note any differences, and if

there was differences between what we'd asked for and what they'd provided, we'd

project those out on the population.

And there was something called performance materiality, which is basically, you

can't get every number the exact same.

If there's a company that's doing 120 million in revenue, of course I don't

have the time, no one has the time to go through every single transaction and

make sure that 120 million is correct.

So we just choose X amount or I dunno, 65 of them.

And we'd calculate what we thought that number should be based on

the information they provided us.

And if it was like $82,000, we'd project that difference

over the rest of the population.

And then that goes back into the performance materiality.

And that was a threshold of acceptable numbers.

So, for big companies, it ends up so it, it can be like $1.4 million,

which you might think, 'Oh my God.

That's a huge difference.

How could you let that happen?'

But it's remembering things like dealing in foreign exchange rates.

Often they have pretty different, like if they did heaps of foreign

exchange transactions, they might have a really different exchange rate

to us, or different in the sense of it's out by 0.002, which ultimately

does have a pretty big effect.

And so it's just providing assurance or like reasonable assurance that,

'Yep, these numbers are presented pretty fairly.' You can't say that

they're a hundred percent accurate, but you can say they're within that

ballpark figure, so yeah, sure.

They're good to go.

Yeah.

And this assurance process, is this something that companies have to do

? Andy Lee: If you're

I think if you're independent, I don't think you have to.

But I know a lot of people do because, if you don't have external auditors coming

in, some people can just cook the books.

Which I always thought, ' Oh, it'd be so easy just to put through

fraudulent pay cycles to yourself'.

Especially in a big corporation.

The only risk that comes with that is if one of the transactions the auditor

happens to pick, is one of the fraudulent ones that you put in then it's,' Whoa...'.

You start getting questions and auditors will flag it, or

good auditors will flag it.

Some of them get, ' Oh no, we really need this client, so we're just

gonna sign off on their financials'.

Yeah,

Did you ever have any exciting moments like that where you

come across something that's a bit spicy?

I wish, I know my first client, I think two or three years before, there'd

been some stuff going on with one of their payroll officers and she, I think

actually went, ended up going to prison, and just no one was able to pick up on it.

But never saw anything personally that exciting.

There were definitely times where I was like, 'Oh, that smells like fraud to me'.

Without, it was always more, I was joking around just saying that,

but there was like a semb of truth of, 'Ah, that doesn't actually make

sense, so why has that gone through?'.

But then you talk to the client and oftentimes they're able to just fully

explain it , when they explain it.

You just document that down as an exception.

And you say based on the evidence, we're not actually gonna project

that on the rest of the population.

Cause it doesn't make sense.

It's a very one-off occurrence.

They've given us all the documentation for it.

So that's fine.

Oh, okay.

You've given a really good overview of what the role in the company is about,

but I guess practically day to day, what does your day end up looking like?

Like what do you do when you arrive in the morning

? Andy Lee: Do you want the real answer?

Do you want the answer that everyone gives?

I want the real

answer.

So that students who are like, wondering what to do with their

career make a good choice.

Yes, fair enough.

So a lot of people like to say that auditors work really long

hours and they work really hard.

That is not a lie , but it's not a hundred percent the truth.

I feel like it's overblown in how much auditors work.

Yes, I felt like there were definitely times, like during end of year,

so for any during 31 clients, those periods did get very busy.

And I certainly remember there were a few weeks they did periods of a few weeks

long while I began into the opposite.

I'm Ieaving at 7- 6- 7, sometimes getting in earlier, sometimes getting

in like at nine, but then you'd be leaving at seven or eight o'clock.

So there were definitely long days involved.

But the benefits of PwC ... there was a lot of flexibility, so you could actually

just work from home if you wanted, which is another thing that I wish I took really

guilty about working from home, which I just don't think you should add at all.

So there was that flexibility.

I really did a lot of the team a lot like 90 - 95% of people

I got along very well with.

And so it was just, you can just chat with them, chill around the place, go

get lunch, et cetera, go get coffees.

It was a hot desk situation, so, that was really good.

It was an open floor plan.

You weren't relegated just sitting at one desk every single day.

Some people did just cause they liked the desk they were at, but if you wanted to

change things up, you definitely could.

. I thought that was fantastic.

And it meant that you could also just sit with all levels of people.

It wasn't like partners were locked away in their office and you could

never get a word in with them.

Or senior managers were here, or managers were there.

It was just everyone sat amongst everyone.

So that's like the office layout and yeah, other than that, outside of the

busy seasons, I did think it could be pretty typical, nine to five.

It was also like if you needed, you could always have a three hour block in the

middle of the day to do your own thing.

It was just about making up the hours elsewhere, which some

people took to extreme liberties.

So don't do that.

Don't start at four in the afternoon and finish at 3:00 AM cuz that doesn't

align with anyone's work schedule.

So that's pretty hard.

You could always just

say, 'Hey, I'm actually gonna need from 12 onwards to do something else'.

And if you didn't want it to be annual leave or unpaid leave or

whatever, you can just stay an extra hour all the other days.

So outside of busy season, I'd say it was very nine to five in the sense of if you

tick off all those hours during the week.

Yep.

All good.

During busy season, that's when it got pretty tough sometimes.

But I should very heavily stressed.

I think that part's overblown.

I don't think auditors love to complain about how many hours they work.

I don't think that's the reality a hundred percent of the time.

No, I got it.

Okay.

So it sounds like you're assigned to one client at a time.

Yeah.

And then, you described the audit process, like what does that look like in practice?

Are you chasing invoices all day

? Andy Lee: Yeah.

So within that client, you'd get assigned areas or parts

of the financial statements.

If you think of their financial statements, the income statement,

essentially you're just looking at the numbers on the income statement and

the numbers on the balance sheet, and making sure that they're all ticked off.

You wouldn't really do testing over cash.

You do testing over accounts receivable.

Or for example, if I got assigned testing of accounts receivable, what

I would do is I'd ask for a breakdown of all your accounts receivable, how

they're aged, and like outside of that.

Then you'd go what's the provision of accounts receivable?

And then you'd perform your testing over there.

Do you wanna break down to how that works

? Jeffrey Duncan: I guess I, I'm more

who has this idea in their head that it's all glamor and high-flying finance,

but just like at any given moment in the day what are you actually doing?

So a lot of it was you would be inputting things into spreadsheets

to make sure they would work.

You'd be getting, reckon 80% ... I'm just gonna say 80.

I can't exactly remember, but I reckon 80% of transactions we tested,

are numbers we tested would always just end up relating back to the

invoice they either received or sent.

And it was a matter of looking at the information on that invoice,

inputting it on our spreadsheet, and then seeing does that number align with

what they've told us or, for example, what I'm saying with the provision

stuff you look at the aging of the receivables and you assign collectability

probability based on that age.

So I'd look at the invoice, I'd say, 'Oh, you sent this invoice, over 90 days ago.

I'm now gonna consider that as you've only got like a 75%

chance of getting that money back'.

So then you would multiply that 75% by the invoice amount.

And that would give you X figure, like 75 grand.

And then you go look at their provision for accounts receivable, like how much

have they provisioned for to lose.

And you'd see have they actually provision a 75% there or have

they done it differently?

You've got a bit of money coming in or out, let's say from the

bank account, and you need to confirm that actually came from where it said it

was coming from, or went to where said, as opposed to just being siphoned off

. Andy Lee: So it was just making

just checking that transactions were real and that they could provide

the paperwork for all of them.

And then, obviously, those transactions affect specific accounts or

specific parts of the balance sheet.

So it was just choosing different transactions from every single line

item , except for the line items that were, very insignificant.

If it was this huge company and they had a hundred thousand dollars thing

in their balance sheet, more often than just probably not even looked at

Cool.

Now, I get it.

So I can see that being interesting for a few weeks, but I'd imagine that would

become pretty repetitive, pretty quickly.

Yes and no.

I think the nature of moving onto different clients at all

times did mean that different clients had different problems.

So one of the things I did enjoy about my time PwC was...

when you'd come up with clients who had problems and didn't know how to

solve them, for example, one of my clients they had a lot of options

that were vesting and they'd used the black SHOs model incorrectly.

So they had to completely rework that model, and that's something

that I had to help 'em with.

And that was actually a really rewarding process cause I know

they were really grateful for that.

They asked us for our work papers after the audit to make sure they

could get it right the next year.

So I like that other 20% of not looking at invoices.

It's doing that problem solving, doing that, troubleshooting and

trying to work out together with them what the number should be.

Because sometimes they don't even know.

They just say, 'Look, we've just done that.

We actually don't know.

We need your help with this'.

And yeah, there are certain times where that gets a bit iffy and

it's, 'Oh, you actually need to engage another arm of our business.

Or ,for independence, you need to talk to EYs tax team or something, for example'.

But there were times like if it's something like I just said, like an

options model, ' Yes, I can help you with that and yes, I can help you

calculate what that figure should be'.

And then you'd have conversations with their CEO and the partner

and the senior manager and myself.

And we'd be sitting there and all of us are just doing calculations and saying,

'No, it should be this cause of this, or it should be that because of that'.

That's cool.

That, that sounds more...

getting into the realm of consulting where you've got a problem for the

client and you're helping them solve it.

So you said before that it wasn't what you expected as a student.

The reality differed from that?

What did you expect and how did the reality differ?

I guess, as a student when I went in, and I think a

lot of it actually was to do with the first team I worked with.

But as a student, I went in and I actually pretty much did the

same thing that I was doing.

I felt like the team I worked with when I was a student, when

I was a vacuum was really good.

Everyone was really supportive.

But on my first job, the one of the managers I thought would just had a

serious problem with me from the get-go.

And they just weren't like, supportive of any mistakes I made.

Just made me feel like every time I was asking for help, that

was just this huge nuisance.

So while the work itself was similar, I didn't retain much of that information

so I was just really fresh, didn't know it, and I didn't feel supported by

this one specific manager, which made things really uncomfortable for me.

And then that was also like, 'Oh, this is nothing like that

job I did over the summer'.

That was all roses.

That was all fun.

I was going out to the client every day here.

Yeah, the internship was really good.

I really like the team, whereas my first actual job at PwC.

I felt like one of the managers just had a serious problem with me.

And then that made the job really hard, even though the work I was

doing was fundamentally the same.

I didn't feel as supported and I didn't feel as encouraged.

And so as a result of that, it was just like I was going into the

office and it was a very big client.

But we're going into the office at 7:00 AM leaving at 6:30 - 7:00 PM.

As a my first three weeks on the job and just to sit there and feel like I was an

idiot cause I wasn't getting that support.

So it was just a bit of a wake-up call in the sense of not every

team at PwC is gonna be like the one I worked on as a vacationer.

And I know some people when they were vacationers really bad experiences

because they got put with a bad team.

I think a big part of it would depend on you worked with.

And as I said, I thought 95% of the people there were great and I really liked them.

But there were those couple people that I thought, 'Oh, you are just

being a dick for the sake of it'.

Sorry.

No, yeah, I can imagine that shapes your experience quite heavily.

And, I guess worth work, worth asking then.

So when you were a student, first of all, how did you come across PwC?

And then what was it that made you wanna work for them specifically?

I actually as a student, knew nothing about any of the big four.

I just did this thing.

So I think, a lot of people apply for graduate roles, etc..

I got quite lucky in the sense, that they just offered me one of my VA program.

The VA program I got through this thing called, I don't even

remember, CA Achievers program.

It's set up by the CA so it was always gonna be more based in accounting.

But you go and you do psychometric testing, like play those games

or do really quick mass puzzles, and then they invite you to

like a focus group or something.

Not a focus group, but you get an assessment center.

And then from there you sit down at a table with four or five other people,

and you get handed a problem and you have to find a way to solve it.

And everyone's, you you get someone from certain firms and they go and sit on

each table and just see how you're doing.

And they just, I guess they wanna see how you work in a team, how you

involve everyone else and how you also just solve the problem to begin with.

So, out of that, I got two internships, one to PwC, one

to a mid-tier firm called PKF.

And I did those back to back in the summer.

And yeah, PwC offered me a job and said yes, went and did my PKF interview.

Internship.

They knew that I'd already had my offer from PwC.

And then, but I said yes with the thought of, 'I'm still gonna apply to other

places, cuz you can always say no'.

And that's what one of my friends from PwC told me as well.

He went, cuz I said to him, 'Oh, they sent me a contract and all that, but if I

sign it and I just locked in for forever'.

And he was like, 'Not at all'.

There's people who get other jobs and pull out.

But then obviously COVID hit, I was interested in going overseas

or trying to go overseas or interstate for investment banking.

But then COVID came in and I just thought, 'Oh, I'd probably rather

just stay at home at the moment'.

There's not really a scope, there is a scope for it, but I feel like

there's not that much of a scope for investment making in Adelaide.

So, I'm gonna stay where I'm just gonna take my PwC offer and then

in three years I'll see where that feeds me down the road.

Yeah, that's how I ended up PwC

. Jeffrey Duncan: Any ad for the

this is still keen on PwC, you've obviously navigated the application

screening process and got those offers.

Any kind of advice there, like did reflecting back on it?

I mean I didn't do PwC's specific one.

I think the biggest advice is just be yourself.

Show that you're a good person to work with.

They don't really care whether you know your stuff or not.

You can be like, really smart really clever, know the ins and outs of

every single accounting standard.

But if you're just not that personable, really difficult to

work with more often than not .I say more often than not, because there

were people like that at the firm.

But more often than not, they're not gonna hire you.

It's about showing that you can be a team player and showing that.

I always fundamentally said, it's about showing that you're just a good person or

a good bloke, because ultimately they're looking for people that they're gonna

be sitting with potentially up to 12- 14 hours a day when it gets really busy.

So they want someone that they'll get along with, or they want

someone who's eager to learn.

They don't want, like some know-it-all, who thinks they know everything

about accounting to begin with.

Yeah, it's good advice.

We used to call it the airport testing consulting, where the person you're

interviewing, you're sitting across from the table and you ask yourself,

' If I'm on a flight to a client, the flight gets delayed for five hours.

Do I want to be stuck in the airport for five hours with this person?'

And the No there's your answer...

you shouldn't hire them.

Sage advice.

Going back to leaving PwC, you mentioned one of the difficult

bits has been, financially tougher.

Is there any other things that you've found difficult to making that call?

I think if I had been pressured a lot by the partners, then I might

have found it a bit more difficult.

But that obviously wasn't the case.

And the partners I did speak to, they were also, or at least one of

them, was very, 'Yeah, screw it.

Do what you wanna do'.

Like I say here, this is, and then he even talked about how, like

the ceiling at PwC, et cetera.

But a lot of the difficulty was, I think, internalized as well.

And it goes back to what I was saying about,' Am I throwing away this

opportunity that's been given to me?'

So that, those were the difficult parts.

But I think even in that sense I'm not gonna call myself a trailblazer.

I'm not the first person that left that at PwC.

But I know there's been, there's people who were in my grad group with

the grad group below me , one of the girls messaged me the other day or

the other month asking me for help.

Cuz she said, 'Hey look, I'm like really not happy here.

What was your mindset?' And I just said, 'Oh, I put these plan in place'.

And then, I got a message her from her last night and she said, 'Hey,

I'm, I've quit my last days on Friday.

Thanks so much for your help'.

And that to me was like this big moment of validation.

Cause it's like cool, other people are now seeing that I'm just off doing

something that I love and they're not resigning themselves to just

staying where they don't wanna be.

So yes, it was like, financially it's a bit more difficult and like emotionally

there's that turmoil of every day, 'Geez, did I make the right choice?'.

But to see other people saying, like asking me, 'Hey

Andy, how are things for you?

I'm thinking of leaving as well, and then seeing them leave something that

they're not happy doing is awesome'.

No, it's good stuff, man.

And I guess we've got an idea of what your average day looked like at PwC.

How about now ? What's just contrasting the two?

What's the day look like now?

My days now are, it's either I'm out learning how to use my camera,

learning how to use the editing software.

If I'm not working, I'm either, yeah, learning how to use the camera,

learning how to use my editing software.

I try and get out and surf as much as I can.

Cause I think that's just so good mentally for me.

I do have that downtime as well.

I'm not one of those people that always trying to work on the next thing.

I think it's valuable to chill out a bit.

But yeah, other than that, if I've got work at Lululemon, I'll go work

there, do my hours and that, that's the big thing I like about it.

, at Lulu, I do my hours, I leave and I don't think about it.

Whereas at PwC, I would be even on those nine to five days or

whatever at night, I'd be thinking, 'Oh, what do I need for tomorrow?

Or, I need to make lunch for tomorrow.

I need to start thinking about this meeting tomorrow with this client'.

What would I be saying?

And so I never fully switched off.

Whereas at Lulu, yep, I switch off and then I'm into the next thing.

It's either I'm chilling or I'm working on my video, or I'm working on my wine label.

It's just my days now don't have that set structure, which to some people is

really valuable and they really like that.

And I think to an extent it's good for me as well or was good for me, but

now I really value the flexibility of kind of being able to pick and choose

what my day looks like on the day.

No, that's there's absolutely value in that.

And like I said, it's not for everybody.

Some people really need someone looking over their shoulder, holding them

to account, being told what to do.

And where to from here, you've touched on the long term dream of working

in the US doing your video, but like kind of the next year or two, do you

have a bit of a an idea of where you want to be heading in the medium term?

I don't know.

I'd try and take things, day by day or week by week.

One of my friends he told me a pretty good story or a good bit of information, but

he worked at the Adelaide International in early January, and he said, and he

got to interview people like Novakovic.

If you asked him last year in October, ' Where do you think you'll be in three

months?' His answer definitely wouldn't have been talking to Novakovic.

So for him it became a bit of, cause I think a lot of people get fixated

on ARM 2024, and I haven't done this.

I'm 28 and I haven't done this yet.

I'm 30 and I don't have this in my life yet.

And I think he was one of those people that also had that idea, but after

that it was like you could be 45 and suddenly things can change for you.

It's like the age.

It doesn't matter.

It's just about your mindset and taking it day by day and going day

by day , and making those steps.

Because one month he was just doing random marketing for a small accounting firm.

Two months later, he's talking to the best tennis player in the world,

arguably one of the best he's ever lived.

So like that was just a huge, or I can do this moment for him.

Just you can't set those expectations so early on.

Like for some people it works, but for him, I think he's realized

it's all about just the process and just trusting in it, and things

will work out where they should.

And , that's where I'm taking that mindset.

I guess, short term, the main goals are just keep improving on my

videography, keep improving on my editing skills, and get this wine

label launched in the next year.

But outside of that, I don't have aspirations of where I want

to be, where I wanna be moving.

Do I wanna stay in Adelaide, do I wanna leave Adelaide?

Those aren't things I'm trying to think of right now.

Yeah, totally.

And certainly no rush.

I think I read somewhere that the in entrepreneurship and what you're doing

is a form of entrepreneurship, but the average age of a successful, like a

unicorn founder, like mid - forties.

It's rarely, people have this misconception.

That all the successful entrepreneurs are dropped outta

uni and hit success immediately, but it's very rarely the case.

Would you want to be moving into video production full-time?

Yeah I'd love to.

Like that would be the dream.

Yeah, we'll do it for the Lakers, but if not the Lakers, just to have,

my own production company and just be telling stories all the time.

I guess, that part of it is just start a really successful YouTube channel.

Love it.

You're obviously you're already picking up a few clients.

How did you go about that?

Because that's often the biggest hurdle is that first client, once you've

made the leap, the first revenue.

That's a bigger milestone than almost any other.

Do think it's interesting just firstly that you're saying

it's the biggest milestone, cuz for me, yeah, it definitely was.

And the very first time I sent someone an invoice and got paid

for it, it was this huge, 'Oh my God, like I've actually done that.

Someone's paid me for work that I've done'.

And that was this, like a bit a moment of validation, but it was

also scary cuz it meant it was real.

And now this is something that like, 'Oh, that's gonna be something that

I've actually put in my tax return.

And I made this amount of money this year based on work that

I've done as a sole trader.'

And so now it's real like there's no turning back now.

But it was an awesome feeling.

It was just leveraging anyone I knew who had any sort of business or would

need any sort of video service, and even just straight up messaging and

saying, 'Hey, I'm transitioning into the video space, just wondering do

you need any sort of video work done?

' And there was a couple nos here and there was one.

So my mate who owns the gym, he said, 'Hey bro, like that sounds awesome.

That's, unfortunately, that's just not in my budget right now, but I'll definitely

let you know when that works out'.

And at that point I went, no, like I'll do it for free.

I'll do you a reel for free and I'm gonna back myself in and if you

like what I do, then we can see if there's a good partnership there.

And so I did a free piece of work for him , and it was just taking a pun on myself cuz

it's not like it took me 20 minutes to do.

I went and filmed at his gym for three hours, and then spent a couple hours at

home editing it all together, grad color, grading it, making it look nice, finding

the music that I wanted, et cetera.

And if I value my time at x amount per hour, it was like a $500

job that I've done for nothing.

Just because I wanted to get my foot in the door and say, this is what I can do.

Let me prove to you that I'm capable and we can work from here.

And he saw it, he loved it and went, 'Oh, mate.

That's incredible.

Yes, we'll definitely get you in.' And then he's managed to find money

in the budgets to start paying me now.

And then from that, it just got me a bit more exposure.

That's a cool story, man.

Well done!

Putting yourself out there, using your network, getting your foot

in the door with a free job.

That's fantastic work .And you're finding it easy to pick up new

clients now are still in the trenches?

Yes and no.

There's certainly.

Client jobs I've been doing that I look at them and I think, 'Oh gee,

that's just not how I wanted to go.

Or that, like the interesting thing is in my head', I've always got this picture

of what it's gonna look like, and then when it comes to actually filming it

sometimes it just doesn't look the same.

Or sometimes I look back at the footage and I think, 'Oh, I

should have asked them to do this.

I should have gotten to do this instead'.

But that is also part of the fun of you have to adapt and create something new

out of something you weren't expecting.

But there's certainly been moments of this is a lot harder than I thought

it would or should be right now.

And then, yeah, I guess, based on that building, the client base is sometimes

taking on jobs you don't necessarily want to do, and finding that balance between.

This job isn't gonna pay as much as I would like, but do I need it

for my portfolio or is it something I want to have on my portfolio?

And just striking that balance.

If I wasn't working at Lululemon or didn't have any other sort of source of income,

I'd be saying yes to every single job I could get no matter what the content.

But, cause I guess financially I still had that, it does afford me that

flexibility to say, 'No, I can't do this on this day, or I don't want to

do that job or don't wanna do this'.

I guess what someone's just starting is probably not the best idea.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally.

And what do jobs pay, when you're starting out for anyone who's thinking

about going in your footsteps?

So I think that's the really difficult part.

It's about pricing yourself.

So, one of the people I work for, they give me $30 an hour, which,

I think I'd like more, but the nature of that relationship is

they can't afford to pay me more.

And that goes back to me saying do I need this job or not?

And it was one of those things where it was like, yes, I probably

do because it'll gimme exposure to this wider set of clients.

Other jobs I do, I might charge like $200 for a 22nd reel or a 32nd reel, but that

in itself might take a couple hours to do.

This national project I'm doing with this gym that's gonna be like over a grand.

And that'll be a couple hours work as well.

So it, I think, yeah, like with creative media, it's that

and all that sort of stuff.

The hardest part is about pricing yourself.

And I'm still discovering that.

I haven't been doing this for four years and I don't know in my head, 'Yeah.

My day rate is this.

Yeah'.

You're

six months in, right?

Yeah, pretty much.

And yeah, basically that first two months I didn't really do anything.

It was just hitting myself about my decision and what have I done.

So it was basically at the turn of the year when I really didn't,

all right now it's time to do it.

So yeah, I think the biggest thing is don't undervalue your own time

because like I've probably done that with a few things I've done.

And I guess the reason I did that was because I'm so new, I was just

like,' Nah I need to like just undercut in a sense, anyone else, so that

I can ensure I can get this work'.

But with that being said, if you undervalue your own time, sometimes

that also just means like people look at you and think, 'Oh, if they don't

think they're worth that much, why would I think they should be worth anything?

Why would I think the quality of their work would be good?'

Yeah.

It's a tough balance to strike.

It's hard to know what the right call is there.

Have you been tempted to jump in full-time, put yourself on a bunch

of freelance contract sites and pick up enough gigs to , cause at the

rate you've been able to charge, you could, assuming you were doing

it full-time, that's a good income.

Just because I feel like my technical capabilities still aren't

at the point where I want 'em to be.

So I feel like my creative eye has always been really good and I've always

been able to see things and think, 'Oh, that would look really cool'.

And when I storyboard it's all in my head and I think this is gonna look

awesome, it's gonna look so sick.

But then when it comes to actually shooting it and actually executing

it, I'm not at the level yet.

I want to be where everything is the way I want it to be because, and that's like I

was saying, where things end up different or things don't go exactly to plan.

So technically there's still a gulf between what I see in my head and

what I'm able to do on the screen.

And so I wouldn't want to pursue it full-time until

I'm able to close that gap.

Yeah, fair enough.

So just in the skill building phase.

It's been super interest, man, to wrap this part of the conversation up.

Do you have any advice, final advice for grads at PwC are on the

fence about their career decision?

Gee, maybe is gonna hate me.

But if you're on the fence, I think it's worth talking to your team leader

depending on who it is, and if it's not your team leader, someone that you

feel comfortable with, and just saying, ' Hey, I'm not sure about my role here.

What

do you think?' Because if that person has your best interest at heart,

they're gonna say either leave or they're gonna consider other factors in.

So, I think it's good to talk to someone else just to get a bit of

a clearer picture, but ultimately the decision has to be yours.

Don't stay at PwC or stay at Deloitte, or EY ,or KPMG because

someone else tells you to stay.

Stay because you wanna stay because you know that there's benefits to

staying and because you know that's gonna help you in the long run.

And on the other side, don't leave just because someone tells you to leave.

Don't leave a stable job just because you are a friend said, 'Oh, you don't

look like you're very happy, you should leave and do something else'.

Because if I'd listened to that, I would've left three months in.

But ultimate, and then if I'd left on someone else's accord, I

probably would've been bitter and would've been like, what the hell?

Why did I make that decision?

Like I should've just stayed.

And I would've always been thinking, what if?

Whereas leaving based on my own terms and coming to that decision by myself,

even though I had people in my ear saying, for so long you should leave.

It was ultimately me who went, 'Yeah, no, I don't wanna be here anymore.'

This is not for me.

I'm going to make that decision.

That's given me a lot more assurance, ironically assurance in that decision.

And a lot more confidence.

And even then, I still have doubts about it.

So I can't imagine what it would've been like if I just left because

someone else told me I should leave.

Really good advice.

And look, honestly, that advice is in line with what the

employer would want as well.

There's nothing worse from an employer perspective, a resignation

that comes outta the blue.

The right thing to do by an employer.

If you're questioning it, is discuss it with them, give them an

opportunity to fix stuff or, help you come to the right decision.

There's nothing to be gained by hiding your the fact that you are questioning it.

Like any good manager would really appreciate that.

Directness and forwardness.

It's, yeah it's good advice all around from the employer and for the grad.

Mate, this has been great.

I think you've got a great vision that you're working towards,

and I love how you talk about storytelling, and obviously that's

what we're trying to do here, right?

Tell stories like yours, that students out there who dunno what their options

are or overwhelmed, can hear from other people like you and just make better

decisions with a bit more confidence.

And I reckon you could help us out there over a feeling.

Andy, thanks for your time.

That was great.

I'm sure there's gonna be a whole bunch of people out there that, really appreciate

the honesty you've just displayed there.

It's as I keep saying, very self-aware of you to think about the way you have and

really excited to see where you end up.

Thanks very much, Jeff.