This transcript has been edited for clarity and checked against the available source transcript and recording. Filler, false starts, and obvious transcription errors have been corrected without changing the speaker’s meaning.
James: Would you please welcome to the show tonight, Scott McKeon.
Scott: Thanks for having me on Graduate Theory.
Intro#
James: It’s fantastic to have you on, mate. You’ve certainly had such a diverse and unique experience at university, so I think hearing from you is going to be incredible.
How Scott decided what to study#
James: One thing I really want to dive into is your university experience generally. We’ve spoken before the podcast, and it’s super interesting. First, what did you study at university, what was your decision-making process, and how did you decide what you were going to do?
Scott: The course I studied is called a Bachelor of Civil Engineering and a Diploma of Engineering Practice at UTS. It’s one of those things where, in hindsight, you can talk with so much clarity, but at the time I was making decisions around de-risking a bad decision rather than trying to make the perfect decision.
When I was in about Year 11 and having to make these decisions, I had no idea where to start. I had no idea what I wanted to do or what life after school looked like. During Year 11, my sister was doing a gap year over at YMC in the UK and having a great time.
To me, finishing school, having a year off, travelling, seeing the world and just exploring sounded amazing. However, I saw some of those programs and nothing seemed exciting enough to put off a year of uni, or whatever tertiary path I wanted to take. It felt a bit more like a year in limbo, and that wasn’t something I was interested in. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I wanted to do something that would help point me in that direction. That meant starting something and figuring it out.
If I had to change later down the line, then I would do that rather than delay the decision. That’s how it felt to me, at least. My sister is now taking a career path based on that gap year, so that contradicts my thoughts, but that’s what I thought at the time.
For me, it was really about choosing something. I knew I was maths- and analytically minded, or at least that’s what I thought I was. Someone said to me at one of these careers fairs, “Engineering’s about problem-solving.” Something about that really struck me.
I knew I liked the built environment, so I was also considering project management and construction management, those types of roles and degrees. I was choosing around that, and I went to a careers adviser to follow up on it. She said engineering is usually a four-year course, but at UTS it’s five years because, in your second year, they get you to leave university for six months and work full-time in the industry.
I was thinking: one, that’s pretty much the second-year gap year I was considering; and two, how about I start that internship really early? I ended up starting it a week after first-year exams. I thought that then I could travel to Europe for the European summer, having had six months of full-time work and earned money I could spend.
That was my entire game plan for getting into tertiary education. I would have one year at university to understand how it worked: how a semester worked, how the subjects worked, making friends and going through that whole first year figuring things out. After that, I would have six months of professional work experience. I would see what an engineer actually does, then get to travel, which was what I wanted to do anyway.
To me, that sounded like such a good way not to dive too deeply into a particular course, but still give something a solid go. I was very open-minded about changing to, say, a commerce or economics degree, which I thought might be a backup. I knew engineering might not be right for me, but I had a good action plan to get started.
That was the plan from pretty much as soon as I got accepted into the course, and I followed it. I was going to networking events in the first couple of weeks of university and trying to figure out how to get a professional internship, which was obviously one of the challenges. What was really useful was that, as an 18-year-old, I was able to get professional mentorship from my boss, my colleagues and people in a professional environment from such an early age. That compounds over time.
The second thing was that it complemented any theoretical studies I was doing because I was practising in the industry as my casual job, then studying it too. That was the starting point of my tertiary education, and I think everything else built off that platform.
James: That’s really cool. I think so many people, even myself, get to the end of university and see people who had that fantastic opportunity at UTS. To get that experience so early on is something I really wanted. I had certain friends who were doing it, and I was so jealous because I wished I could have got something like that early on.
Even getting a taste of the actual job you’re going to do before you finish university and go and do it is so important. You can work out: is this something I enjoy? Is there something I don’t enjoy? Was that your experience too? How did you find it, and how did it support your university studies as you continued?
How did working while studying improve his experience at university#
Scott: That’s so true as well, because when you’re in a role, the variables are the industry and the company, with any given role at any given company being just a slice of a particular industry or field. Then you have the team you’re in. Are you in a great team? Do you have a great manager? All those things make a big difference when you’re just getting started. I was always assessing that.
I was in two main teams on two projects during my undergrad years, and both teams were really supportive. I would ask for experience with, say, the environmental engineering team, and I’d get half a morning or a couple of hours, one or two days a week, to gain that breadth. I was really lucky to have that support.
Being a student is also one of the best positions you can be in, because everyone wants to help you, expose you to different opportunities and support you. There’s less obligation than in a full-time job. In a full-time job, you’re hired as a full-time resource. As a uni student, you’re essentially casual staff who can help out in a couple of ways here and there. I was lucky, but I also utilised that position to get a couple of diverse experiences.
When you come back to university in third, fourth or fifth year, you and all your uni friends have had internships, probably at different places. Some of you have worked together or at the same companies on different projects. Not only individually but across the cohort, everyone is talking about what’s going on.
You speak to friends who had great internships and think, “That industry is probably pretty good. I never would’ve known about that.” You might know people who had terrible internships and think, “Stay away from that. That’s not what I like. That’s not right for me.” Or you might hear about other people liking something and think, “That’s just not for me.” Learning vicariously through your cohort upped the level of the conversations you could have.
You could talk professionally about what was going on in the industry. People had opinions about particular projects and other things. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a professional environment because you’re still uni mates, getting coffees and beers after class. It’s still very casual, but you’re learning about this stuff together. I think that made all of us much more informed about the pathways we wanted to take and the opportunities available.
In first year, when my sister was in third year because she’s two years older, she was studying a Bachelor of Architecture, also at UTS. There was one of these overseas trips you could go on, and UTS would give you a scholarship. She told me about it. I applied the day before applications closed and was awarded one too. We both went to Banda Aceh in Indonesia, the northwestern point that was a focal point of the Boxing Day tsunami hitting Indonesia.
It was a one-week social project, and I thought, “Wow, university can send you overseas to do a social-impact project, it’s paid for, you get to learn so much and you meet 10 other people from all over the UTS campus. How cool is that?”
I ended up doing multiple projects like that, including From the Ground Up in Nepal with Joe and Nick. That was still in its very early stages, but our friends and cohort told each other about these types of opportunities as they came up in third, fourth and fifth year because those were the things we were talking about.
If you have a peer group who are all identifying what’s going on and where the opportunities are, particularly if you’re friends and can see what each other likes, that’s really powerful. It always comes back to who your community is and where that local information gets passed around.
James: I definitely agree. Even in my own university experience, when it came to moving degrees, you only really heard what a degree might be like if you knew someone doing it. Economics was your backup option, for example. Those kinds of things help so much with knowing what’s out there and what opportunities you can pursue.
Sometimes the blocker is that you don’t even know what you could do. It’s not that you don’t like it or don’t want to do it; you just have no idea. If you knew an opportunity existed, as with your exchange or your trip to Indonesia, you could decide that you wanted to go.
Who you’re friends with and the community you’ve built through university can shape the opportunities you see and pursue. That’s so important in creating yourself as you go through uni and shaping who you become as you go into your career.
Exploring extra-curriculars during university#
James: I want to continue the university timeline. You’d started this second-year program and gone on exchange. How did your third and fourth years shape up? Were you continuing to explore other extracurricular things, and what did that look like?
Scott: When I was in Europe, in the middle of second year, I was asking myself whether I should continue with engineering, particularly civil engineering, or do something else and use my first-year subjects as electives or transfer subjects, with no harm done.
Ultimately, I decided I had a lot of momentum. I had momentum in the course, a great group of friends and a great team at the internship who would be there when I came back to Sydney and wanted a job again. Even if I wasn’t set on civil engineering, that momentum was too good to give up for an unknown path. I didn’t really think twice about it. I thought, “I’ll see where this can go. This is pretty good.”
The end of second year was great because the second half of second year is when the course schedules students to take six months off. All my friends had taken six months off for their internships, so I had to meet a whole group of students who were off the set course timeline that people follow to a tee. I had front-loaded internships, and after that I was always optimising the timeline around how many days I could work.
It was great because I always had my core group of friends, but I was also meeting mature-age students, people from here and there, and people who had transferred from other degrees. It was good to break out of the initial pattern of starting in year one and following the same group of people each semester.
I got to learn through them what they had done. Someone had taken two years off to do ski seasons in Australia and then overseas. I heard those types of stories and journeys, including how people had ended up back in engineering. Someone had been studying a teaching degree and then transferred to engineering. Someone else studied engineering, went into nursing for 10 or 15 years, then came back to engineering.
Those were the types of people I met. Their stories, right as I was coming back from Europe and contemplating whether to continue on this path, grounded my constant thinking: what am I doing? What am I liking? What can I do? How can I try to figure out new things?
Third year was more about really sinking into the university ecosystem. I still had that casual job from the internship, I had my core university work, and I was involved in uni games, which was a lot of fun. I don’t think too much else happened. I was recalibrating, and third year is probably the toughest year in the course, so I wasn’t doing much beyond that. I had planned to go on exchange for six months in fourth year, so it was about grounding myself and following through with the degree.
I don’t recall too much else of note from third year. In fourth year, I went on exchange in the States for six months. I came back and started getting involved with From the Ground Up, UTS and a whole range of other activities. That was really the turning point.
The other thing I tried in third year was getting internships at start-ups. I was emailing consultancies and similar places to see what I could do for my second internship. I knew I was going on exchange and would do my second internship after I came back. It was a big period of trying different things, although nothing really came out of it.
There was a social-payments company where I was a brand ambassador for a couple of weeks. Then it was bought by Airbnb and shut down. One of my friends was starting a cleaning-platform start-up, and I was trying to get a job or help out with that, but I had no idea what to do and it didn’t go anywhere.
Even while I was at uni and had a casual job in the industry, I was trying a range of other things, or at least looking for the right opportunity where I could say, “Let’s try it.” All that came to a pause when I went on exchange. You pause life for six months, go overseas and travel.
Exchange was really cool because I did no engineering subjects. I obviously have a lot of interests beyond civil engineering, and this was my opportunity to explore them. I did psychology, film studies, public speaking and a marketing subject. They were all introductory subjects, but learning entirely different things outside any engineering coursework, combined with living in a different place and not having the internship or the same lifestyle, was a really good breather from engineering back home.
When I came home, that energised me to get back to work and back to business. I reached out to Joey and said, “Hey, Joey, I think I can help. How can I help? I’ll just be a fly on the wall. I don’t know what I can do, but I want to be involved and see what happens.” It was the same with UTS.
I had momentum, then when I pulled back I became hungrier to dive into things. I think it’s healthy to pull back from what you’re doing, sit back and let the hunger build up again so you can go full steam ahead.
James: I absolutely agree. I want to dive further into your exchange experience because I know, from my own experience, it was similar. I’m actually wearing a jumper at the moment from when I went to Sheffield in the UK.
Going away was a good opportunity to reset and consider where I was going at uni and what I was doing with my life. When I came back, similar to what you said, I was really energised. My grades were much better, I was joining more clubs and participating in things.
Going on exchange#
James: I was actively seeking opportunities much more than before I went. Honestly, I think it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Would you agree, and was there a clear before-and-after moment for you?
Scott: The main benefit was that, as life goes on, you accumulate more things and responsibilities, and things get set. You have a casual job, and you don’t have to opt into it any more. Instead, you have to ask, “Do I not want to work here any more? Do I quit?” Otherwise, you continue. You don’t have to opt into your university degree any more. You have to ask whether you’re going to continue with it, finish it or quit.
We describe the things you accumulate in your life as a bucket. Everyone is holding a bucket, and responsibilities are constantly being put into it until it’s full. When more responsibilities come along, it’s as if you’re walking down a beach and those responsibilities are shells in your bucket. You find the nicest shell you’ve seen, but your bucket is full. What do you do? You find something in the bucket and say, “I don’t want that any more.”
You take out a responsibility you no longer want: perhaps a committee or something else that’s taking up your time and that you’re no longer enjoying. You take it out and put this new thing in.
Exchange, at least for me, was tipping that bucket out entirely. Life was on hold for six months. I was going overseas. There was no work, and while you do exchange subjects, it’s not as academic as you’re used to in a normal semester. You have a new group of friends. All of that was very freeing, as was the space to explore beyond engineering.
I had this narrative in my head that I was a civil engineer and that was what I was doing. That was my narrative in first, second and third year: I was going to give civil engineering a good shot. I always had in the background that it might not be the case, with a plan B and plan C, but I was going to give engineering a solid go. I wanted to prove to myself that it wasn’t for me by doing a good job of it.
It was very freeing to say, “Scott, at the end of the day, you’re not a civil engineer. You’re Scott, and Scott can be interested in a lot of things.” That was my time to explore, and I really got into it. Even though some of those subjects I did on exchange were pass/fail and didn’t really matter, I studied more than I needed to get by because I liked them. I found myself speaking to lecturers after class about the topic of the day for no reason. That was an intrinsic motivator.
Towards the end, you come back and integrate into normal life. Before I started putting responsibilities back in the bucket, I had to think, “What do I want to commit myself to, and is what I currently have enough for me to be satisfied?”
That’s where Joey and the From the Ground Up Nepal project came in. I loved overseas projects. I’d travelled to Indonesia and other parts of Asia, I was studying civil engineering and the built environment, and this project involved building schools, health centres and infrastructure after an earthquake. You can see that it was a natural thing for me to be interested in, given what I’d been doing. It was an opportunity to help out.
If I hadn’t had that break and reset, I probably would have said, “I’m too busy. I’ve got this thing coming up. Sorry, Joe, maybe something else.” Instead, I came back from exchange and told work I wasn’t starting again for a while, during the university’s mid-semester or between-semester break. I had the time and an opportunity to pursue those natural interests.
That gap was good, but From the Ground Up, UTS and the engineering job all grew with responsibilities, and everything started to accumulate again.
James: That’s cool. The bucket and shells are a fantastic analogy and a great way to think about it. Like yourself, I think having the opportunity to empty the bucket and put in things you really want lets you dive into your genuine interests, rather than things you’ve picked up along the way almost by accident.
It’s life-changing and can take you down a path closer to the things you want to do, rather than the things you’ve always done. One thing I wanted to speak to you about is the non-profit work you did in Nepal.
Non-Profit work in Nepal#
James: Could you describe what was involved? You touched on it there, but what were the main learnings? What were the real benefits for you?
Scott: I played a very small role. I would probably say 98 or 99 per cent of it was a guy called Nick Abraham, who was living over in Nepal for three and a half years. He’s a carpenter and builder, and he was going over there to build. He and Joey got connected, and Joey was supporting him. The next thing, Joey was going over to Nepal to help, so he became involved. I saw it from a distance, but I was going on exchange soon and had that inertia of, “Oh, that’s cool that Joey’s doing that.”
Joey and I had been close friends since high school, so it was very accessible, but I was still watching it from a distance. When I came back from exchange, I said, “I’m keen to help out. I’m not sure what I can do. I’ll be a fly on the wall.” Over time, I started helping more and more. About seven or eight months later—in August 2016 I became involved, then in March 2017—I was over in Nepal, where I met Nick for the second time but for the first time since becoming involved.
Joey went over to Nepal and got quite sick quite quickly. He said, “You know what? I’m going to help you from Australia. You keep doing your good work, and I’ll help with all the back-end work around running the non-profit, fundraising and anything else you need.” I was helping Joey with what was going on.
Nick was living in a community about two hours out of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. Initially, we were trying to build a school because we were told that was what people needed. While they did need core infrastructure, over time we saw two main needs that weren’t being served by other non-profits or local governments. The local governments were also building schools, so by coming in we were competing with them to build their own infrastructure. You can see how it gets messy when people come from Australia to try to build local government infrastructure.
The first thing people did need, which Nick could give them, was greater education about construction methods and quality. When the next earthquake happens, there won’t be as much devastation because the building quality is higher.
The second was not only giving them education, but also providing employment so they could practise those methods and earn a sustainable income in their local community. They wouldn’t have to do what a number of people in Nepal and other parts of Asia do: go overseas and send money home.
I used to know the figure, but the statistic has escaped me because I haven’t been involved for a number of years. Money sent back by overseas family members is one of the big contributors to Nepal’s economy. I think it’s GDP, though it may be another measure of how money flows into Nepal, but it is statistically significant.
Through doing that, we transitioned from a non-profit that did a lot of incredible work—we built two schools, a health centre and more than 100 toilet blocks in this region—to also starting a social enterprise and brick factory. It was a construction contractor and brick factory that Nick still runs today, and he also has an Australian branch of the same business as a builder.
That was all really exciting. My journey from it had two big lessons. First, it was a self-directed project. We had Nick leading it with boots on the ground and us supporting, but there was no set goal that said, “This is what we’re doing.” It was, “We’re here to help. Nick is really part of the community. How can we help them?” We had various advisers and mentors around us, but ultimately we had to make our own decisions to move things forward.
It’s not that there are very few opportunities to do self-directed projects; I think the opposite. There are plenty, and that’s certainly what we’re doing with The Constant Student. But in the more traditional world outside entrepreneurship, there are very limited opportunities. At the large engineering and construction company where I worked, and at university, you were being told what to do the entire time rather than deciding on a goal and working towards it.
Conceptually, that gave me so much of the confidence I needed to go into Espresso after leaving university with no prior experience in that industry. I had done the reps of setting a goal and working towards it, even when I didn’t know the exact path, with Nick, Joey and a few other people.
The other lesson was gaining experience with all the nuances and challenges. When you don’t know what to do, whom do you ask? How do you build a supportive mentor network around you? The project was a platform to get mentorship and advice, and then to get opportunities that came up through places such as UTS. UTS could say, “You’re doing this Nepal thing. How can the university support it?” Your workplace could ask how it could support the work too.
Having a project as a platform is like having a podcast that lets you reach out to people and interview them. You can learn a lot from the platform mentality of having your own project. It’s great for pretty much anyone.
James: I loved what you said about thinking independently and the shift that happened while you worked on the project. You went from working in a team where the manager or someone else says, “Please do this,” and you’re almost a robot who says, “Yes, I’ll do it,” to deciding for yourself, “I want to achieve this. How do I do it?”
That’s certainly important for what you’re doing, but it’s also a general life skill: being able to think independently and pursue what you’ve decided you want.
Coming back into university#
James: That’s super important. You also mentioned your experience with UTS and how the Nepal experience integrated back into university. Do you mind diving into that? What situation came up there?
Scott: At university, I always knew approximately what marks I was going to get. I had a couple of techniques and tactics. If there was an easy assignment, I aimed for a high distinction and went for 100 per cent.
When an assignment was given out, I would spend three or four hours on it that day, make the template, do as much as I could and map out what it entailed. Then I would come to each lecture or tutorial with a couple of questions that helped me answer it. It was quick and efficient. The lecturer liked that you had started the assignment well before everyone else and were asking questions. Those were cheeky tactics, but a very good use of time.
University subjects were tough, and exams had high variability. You might think you’d tanked an exam and be very worried afterwards. With an assignment, you set the quality of what you submit. If you’ve seen past papers, you can estimate your performance from other work. For me, it was always pretty reasonable, and I never really had to complain about marks.
When I came back from exchange, around the same time I started with Nepal, one of my friends messaged me during exam time and said, “I thought I was going to get this good mark. I put in so much effort, but I ended up getting this mark. I’m really disappointed. It wasn’t fair.”
I was interested in the student experience. I had industry experience but was still a student of about 20 or 21, so I could see both sides. There were gaps and barriers where the student experience could be delivered better, people could learn more and everyone could get better outcomes. At the same time, the view that academics should do everything because it wasn’t easy and was unfair wasn’t necessarily the answer either.
I started emailing subject coordinators from subjects I’d done, saying I was interested in learning more about the student experience. Eventually, I was referred to the person who ran teaching and learning in the engineering faculty, looking at student learning and outcomes at the course level. I had coffee with him and told him some of these stories and how I approached group assignments. I had a method for that too.
He started inviting me to things, saying, “We have a faculty offsite once a semester. How about you come? There’s always a student panel about the student experience.” I remember going and feeling like an outsider, not because I was a student, but because every other student was president of a society, had done this and was involved in X, Y and Z. They had all these credentials.
Everyone asked what I did within the university environment. I said, “Pretty much nothing. I turn up, do my classes, have friends and have an internship.” The non-profit was only just getting started then, or perhaps hadn’t started yet. I felt strange being around all these people and wondered why I was there as a student voice.
I was there because I was interested. Why did that staff member invite me? Because I was interested. While I felt strange about not being president of a society or group, perhaps I was there because I was the most interested in that specific topic, not because I had accolades. With accolades, you become the person invited to everything and simply turn up.
My grades were going quite well, and I did particularly well in one subject that was related to Nepal. We had to design a concrete and brick mix, which was what we were doing in Nepal at the time. After class, I could speak to the subject coordinator specifically about that. This comes back to the platform conversation: my marks related to my work in Nepal, and other parts of the subject related to my engineering internship. It all started stacking up very serendipitously.
Once I got my marks back, I went to the subject coordinator and said, “Can I help you teach this subject next semester? I have work experience, did well in the subject and have the Nepal experience. How can I do that?” I had no idea whether I could or whether he had any places. I just thought to ask.
Eventually, I got a job as a tutor or teaching assistant, initially just helping students in class. That was easy.
Once I was comfortable, I said I could run the tutorials and give the coordinator those two or three hours back. In the first class, I hung in the corner and answered students’ questions. In the second, I asked, “Can I run the class and have you supervise instead?” He agreed. After two classes, I said, “I’m fine. You can be there if I need you, but I know the content.” He’d seen me do it twice, so he agreed. It was very incremental: “Let me do this,” then being able to do it.
I loved it because, particularly in engineering, I had rarely found the teaching staff relatable as a student. As a student tutor, I could say, “Here’s the curriculum. You’ve got to get through it,” without dressing it up and saying you needed to know something for a vague reason. I could speak to students with understanding: “This is the information you need to get through the course, and here’s how it relates to my work experience and non-profit work.” That was really enjoyable.
Once I was involved in that subject, other subjects and opportunities came up. UTS was transitioning from semesters to trimesters, which shortened and changed the timeline of both core semesters. A new summer trimester opened up, but there were no subjects to fill it because people normally went on holidays and academics did much of their research then. The teaching semester makes it hard for them to do the main body of their research.
They were looking for subjects and naturally asking whom they should speak to. Someone said, “What about that Scott guy? He might have a subject you could do.” That’s what happened. Joey was the client representative for From the Ground Up and I was the UTS representative. To top it off, I got the engineering company where I was interning to sponsor an industry prize for the subject: the real trifecta. It was really good.
As I mentioned earlier, graduate employers expect you not to know much about the industry when you finish a three-, four- or five-year course. That’s why my engineering capstone project involved aligning and redesigning parts of the engineering course with graduate work, creating a clear ramp through university and an off-ramp into graduate life.
James: There’s so much to unpack. The initiative you’ve shown slowly built all these experiences and led you to create your own subject at uni. It’s an incredible story and shows the value of continually pushing your case forward, because so many people wouldn’t do that.
Showing Initiative#
James: They might think, “No one would accept me if I asked this,” and count themselves out before asking. Your story is a great example of pushing things forward. Maybe they say yes and maybe they don’t, but regardless, you continue. So many doors have opened because you’ve put yourself out there and been in it to win it.
You also spoke about the ramp from leaving university to becoming a graduate in a company, and the mismatch that can occur between what the workplace expects you to know to be effective and what university teaches. Was that your experience? As you approached graduation, did you discuss it with people?
Scott: I was in a very atypical position. I started my professional experience a week after first-year exams, and it continued for four and a half years until I graduated. I onboarded graduates and did their introductions, and I knew the next level above graduate roles. I knew that exact pathway and the quality of those roles because I’d worked there for years.
It was a big project with about 400 people, so I saw the breadth of people’s experience and the work they could do. I could judge where I sat compared with them in terms of what I could do day to day. I understood that quite well.
There was a lot of uncertainty as graduation approached. I was doing all these great projects, but I didn’t know what was next. I was essentially asking someone to sell me a job that looked great: excite me about something. Unfortunately, my company wasn’t doing that. I had meetings with site-based and corporate HR and was shown a couple of opportunities, but they weren’t very interesting.
They were also trying to create a graduate program. I thought, “Awesome. That’s what I want to do.” I’d been an undergraduate for so long, my thesis partly redesigned the civil engineering course to create that graduate on-ramp, and I’d known the company from age 18 to 23. I obviously had opinions about it, and that was what I aimed for.
Ultimately, it went into the HR bucket. I asked to speak to someone from HR, but for them it was one of 10 things on a to-do list. Meanwhile, I was saying, “Let me do it.” That was one path. Another was speaking to graduate employers and applying to standard programs, trying to find a role I liked.
The final path came from an entrepreneurial course I was doing. A side project grew out of it, starting as a second screen for a laptop. It gathered momentum and excitement. We began making prototypes very quickly, and we were both keen to see what would happen next.
UTS was also offering me more work teaching subjects and doing casual teaching-and-learning and curriculum work after my capstone. A few things were going on. From around August, I gave myself until the end of October, when my graduation ceremony took place. I never accepted a full-time graduate contract because I didn’t want one.
By my graduation ceremony, I said, “Sorry, I finish on this date. I’m interested in doing the graduate-program project, but nothing else.” Ultimately, they said they couldn’t get involved in it then.
That led me to say, “I’ve got this UTS work. Let’s see where espresso displays can go as well,” and dive into the exciting start-up world. From the outside, the possibilities looked incredible. Even at the beginning, we were flying to China to visit manufacturers and learn how to develop a product. That journey was opening up while I was fighting hard to do something at the company that made sense for a person like me to implement.
In a big corporation, it’s hard to get things done and everyone has to stay in their lane. One of the most important things is getting the people who are most interested to work on what they’re passionate about. That’s very hard in a big corporate organisation unless the culture supports it, and I don’t think that was the case. But an opportunity lost is an opportunity gained.
James: That’s a very interesting story. Big corporations can have a grey line. It’s not necessarily that they’re slow-moving, but you have to ask one person to ask another. That can create a barrier for someone like you, who has the initiative and drive to go and smash things out straight away. You want to do the thing, but all these barriers are in the way. A start-up is perfect for you.
Scott: Right, but I didn’t know that at the time. The corporate world was the only world I knew. I didn’t know the scary start-up world, but a couple of years later, it’s definitely where I belong much more.
James: It’s a great story. You’ve now been part of this start-up for a few years. What real challenges have you faced and overcome along the way?
Facing challenges with Espresso#
James: How have you dealt with those challenges? There’s no doubt that in a start-up you face serious challenges that you wouldn’t face as a graduate in a company. What have some of those been, and how have you dealt with them?
Scott: Espresso is now growing quite fast, and I’m learning so much every day at an increasing rate. In the first six or 12 months, I wasn’t very efficient or focused on the right things. It helped that we had two clear goals: make a prototype we could pre-sell, then pre-sell it by launching a Kickstarter campaign. Everything else was non-essential, although there was a lot of non-essential work going on.
What I wish I’d had then was The Constant Student and project feedback sessions with people a couple of steps ahead. They could do more than pat you on the back; they could tell you which skills to spend time developing now because they would pay off later.
At the early stage, get very clear about what you want to achieve. Then create your own learning curriculum based on the time and resources you have. If you have money to spend, you can get good advice early. I could probably have hired an expert adviser for a couple of hundred dollars a month for one or two check-ins, if they didn’t want to help for free because they supported what we were doing.
There were also software tools I wish I’d learnt then. You can always look back as you learn and see how you could have done things better. What’s important is clarity about what you’re trying to achieve, then creating forced milestones that help you get more done more quickly and reach your destination faster.
The big difficulty we opted into with Espresso was launching a crowdfunding campaign based on a prototype without fully understanding the manufacturing process. Many people launch Kickstarter campaigns when manufacturing is ready and all they need is the final order. We only had a prototype, so we were biting off more than we could chew.
The campaign went really well. We sold more than 1,000 units in the first 40 days, then had to figure out how to manufacture the product. During that process, the COVID pandemic began in China, where we were manufacturing. My co-founder was in Shenzhen while the whole country was in lockdown, and he struggled to get back just before the borders shut.
There were many challenges like that. This comes back to From the Ground Up, professional work experience and everything else: the momentum and confidence reveal themselves. You need to keep pushing and taking the next step. It doesn’t matter which start-up you’re working on or what milestone or objective you’re pursuing. You need perseverance. If you listen to, read or hear anything about this type of work—trying to make something from nothing—perseverance is number one.
James: That’s really cool. When heaps of things are happening, being able to persevere is fantastic. Even through university, you’ve received noes but persevered anyway.
Looking at where you are now, what key things prepared you well for what you do? Did university do a good job, or was it more your work experience, Nepal and the other things you did?
Do you think university prepared you well?#
James: Even within university, how well did it prepare you for what you’re doing?
Scott: University is one of the best educational ecosystem products. Education isn’t the product, and the curriculum is the excuse; it’s what you enrol in. The actual product is the ecosystem: the people and friends you’re doing these things with. In my case, there was no internship without the degree.
University prompted the internship and travelling at that particular time because it was between semesters. It prompted exchange: you have to be part of a university to go on exchange.
Because I was involved in those things, I became involved in From the Ground Up. Because I was a student, I became involved in teaching and learning at the university. There was also an entrepreneurial course I was interested in, and that’s where the first idea for Espresso started.
You have to ask what you got out of it. Was it any given subject, class or syllabus dot point? No. The ecosystem was the value. That’s why I feel for first-, second- and third-year uni students over the last year and this year: all they have is the curriculum, while the ecosystem is remote.
That’s also why our recent book, 18 and Lost, tells eight different stories about what people have done and how they’ve navigated this time. It’s meant to reassure people at that age and stage. You don’t really know what to do, and there is no perfect answer or path. Hearing several other stories in depth empowers you to recognise that you’re on your own journey and can make daily decisions that put you on the right path. The book’s goal is to have people think about their path and decisions that way.
The other thing is The Constant Student: take the best parts of the ecosystem and remove the worst parts of the product. As you would know as a member, there is absolutely no curriculum. It’s just the ecosystem and the programs run through it. They aren’t run to give you a certificate or something to show everyone else; they offer techniques that help you do more of what you want to do.
The prompt is that everyone has their own goal. The six-week programs take you from point A to point B and make a tangible difference during that time. My takeaway is to think of university as an ecosystem. It’s a great ecosystem that you can get a lot out of. Anyone who only attends classes and doesn’t get involved beyond that is missing a lot more.
James: That’s a fantastic way to put it. The benefit I got from university was magnified once I became involved with university clubs, went on exchange, attended class, met my housemates and did things with them. Those experiences are associated with uni but aren’t necessarily part of the university process itself. That describes the value you can get during university very well.
I’ve got one last question, Scott. Given all your experiences through university and where you are now with your start-up, what one lesson would you give yourself if you were starting university again at the beginning of next year?
One lesson to those starting university#
Scott: Join The Constant Student. Honestly, without a doubt, that’s what I would say. That’s why Liam, Joey and I are working on it and why it exists. There’s so much you can learn right now. If university is being delivered online, imagine learning on the internet without the university constraint of subjects and coursework.
How about learning within 12 weeks or one or two years? In one year, you could not only learn a year’s worth of information and content, but also learn and earn. You could earn money from the things you’re learning and level up in multiple ways. Again, it’s the ecosystem.
The ecosystem is your platform to build on. All the things I benefited from are consolidated within The Constant Student, and it will continue to grow over the years. Get involved and ask questions. Rather than looking for answers to be given to you, think of yourself as an adventurer. You have to discover, look around, determine things, ask questions and try things. People are always happy to help, guide you along the path and let you try things. If you have that mentality, it doesn’t really matter what you do. Because you’re doing things, you’ll find the right answer.
James: That’s amazing and profound advice. I really appreciate it, and it’s certainly valuable. Thanks so much for your time today.
If listeners want to find out what you do and connect with you, where’s the best place to go?
Scott: You can find me at espresso displays. The website is espres.so. You can also find me on LinkedIn as Scott McKeon. That’s pretty much it.
James: Cool. Thanks so much for your time, Scott. I appreciate your wisdom. We’ll wrap it there.
Scott: Awesome. Thanks so much.