How To Build a Business While Getting Your Degree: Lessons from Origins Media Haus
Being a newcomer to Toronto, I was introduced to Alison Osborne by a mutual friend as “someone you have to know in the city”. We met over coffee and connected instantly. When she told me about Origins Media Haus, the content agency focused on video and podcasts she co-founded with partners Stephanie Andrews and Brittany Nguyen, I knew I had to sit with all three for a chat.
In a little over an hour, we discussed some of the most dangerous entrepreneurial myths, how to deal with burnout while building your company, and what makes owning a business so rewarding. Here are the highlights of our talk.
How did Origins Media Haus come to be? What made you decide to build your own content agency?
Stephanie: Origins originally started as an online magazine about entrepreneurship. When I was 16 years old, my dad handed me a copy of Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad and asked me to read it. The book was very influential to me and made me think about having full control of my work life. As I started university, I already had a clear picture about starting a company, but was faced with the crushing reality that nearly 95% of startups fail. We built the magazine to interview the successful 5% in a mission to figure out what made those entrepreneurs tick, what was their definition of success and how they motivated themselves on the day to day.
Brittany: As Stephanie was building the magazine back in 2015, she asked me to come onboard as a photographer and we’ve been working together ever since. I really like documentary storytelling, getting to know people, learning about their cultures and backgrounds, travelling to different places and having new experiences. To be honest, I never really thought about the concept of being an entrepreneur, but I’ve been freelancing since high school, so I’m used to being my own boss. The reality of it is that I just like making things. It’s that simple.
Alison: I think, for me, I didn’t have in my mind that I wanted to be an entrepreneur either. That wasn’t something that I wanted to pursue as a career path, but I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to be. In order to figure it out, I was very open to any opportunities came my way, so Steph’s invitation to join the magazine team was a natural fit for me. In this “meta” process of creating a publication about entrepreneurship in order to build our own company, I fell in love with the sense of freedom that comes with the territory.
There certainly is a sense of freedom, but also a greater sense of responsibility.
Alison: Absolutely. Unfortunately, a lot of people misconstrue it and believe that freedom means "free time". There are actually more hours dedicated to the job, more stress, a greater weight of responsibilities. But the joy that you get out of having total control of your business makes it all worthwhile. We can make a greater impact this way also.
Brittany: It’s a personality thing and not everyone is cut out for this, which is fine. For me, I never liked being in one company, because I would get bored with regular office jobs. They made me feel like I was in a box. I need to feel challenged, I need to experiment and that’s easier to do when you’re in the driver’s seat.
That’s an interesting point — entrepreneurship has gained such traction that there’s almost a societal pressure in starting a company if you demonstrate leadership skills. What are your thoughts on this?
Stephanie: That was a major discussion when we started the company. There were so many misleading stories of overnight success that this entrepreneurial myth was really building up.
Alison: Yes. I think today there’s a lot more talk about failure, about depression and burnout that many entrepreneurs face. The negatives are real and, as we conducted the interviews, I loved hearing how they worked through their struggles. As for the idea of an overnight success… you know, that’s so frustrating because there are usually five or ten years behind a successful product that no one notices, or reports on. To the public, it’s like, “oh, all of the sudden, you just built this, you’re a genius!” and we know that’s not true. Unfortunately, we’re all so hooked on instant gratification that it’s the story that sells.
Stephanie: It was an interesting parallel because, as we were hearing these stories, we were uncovering the truth about owning a business ourselves. We had the opportunity to work with agency services, building websites, writing blogs, creating videos, etc. It gave us the chance to try a little bit of everything and understand what we really liked to do. We pivoted back and forth several times before realizing that the magazine wasn’t as profitable as we’d like. We fell in love with podcasting, so last year we became the video and podcast agency that you see today.
The joy that you get out of having total control of your business makes it all worthwhile.
It’s remarkable how you gained all of this experience while in university and have a fully functional content marketing business at such a young age.
Brittany: Ironically, I feel like there’s no rush to things. As a creative, I think experimentation is so important. That’s an advantage to being young — I see it as having nothing to lose at this point. You can just go all out and tread on different avenues until you find the one that sticks.
Alison: There is that period of panic after you graduate, there is that pressure to find your place. People feel like they need to be settled so quickly.
Brittany: The lesson is: don’t be afraid to be lost. People naturally need a place to feel safe and comfortable, but there really shouldn’t be such a pressure for young graduates to find that straight out of university.
Stephanie: I also think we had an advantage as young people because we were offered a lot of opportunities. Clients would see us as three millennial women who were eager to work, and they figured that we would know how to target our demographic. And we can still use that to our advantage today. We bring a young, fresh perspective. There have been clients that were very set in their ways and didn’t necessarily understand our way of running things. As we matured, we became more confident in our process and have started respecting that it’s a matter of getting the deliverable done, and not how it gets there.
I think that once you get mileage, people start hiring you precisely because they want you to do it your way.
Stephanie: Absolutely.
How does that knowledge translate into your business model today?
Stephanie: Essentially we are a team, and the way that teams work is that everyone has to have each other’s back. Everyone needs to have a decent enough skill set to be able to help others out. For that to happen, people need to be given the opportunities to challenge themselves outside of what their norm would be. We run the business by allowing everyone to have the freedom to explore any kind of job they want. Videomakers should also be able to explore marketing if that’s what they want to do, for example. It’s really the best way to continuously learn, not only as a professional, but in your personal life as well.
People need to be given the opportunities to challenge themselves outside of what their norm would be.
I suppose that’s an approach that a lot of new startups take, would you agree?
Alison: Yes, and overall, Toronto is great for the startup scene. I think it’s an exciting time for us to be here and to be involved in the community. Everyone is very connected and it’s really cool to see that network happen. For us, it’s been very helpful — we found that people want to work with us once they’ve gotten to know us. The speed of conversion when someone knows your work and trusts you is insane. It’s key to be involved in the community in Toronto, to show up to conferences, to be open to meeting new people and presenting your work. That’s how you make a name for yourself here. It shows that any company starting out in the city can be successful.
Can you comment on any projects you’re working on?
Stephanie: We are launching a podcast in September called The Tech Haus, which we’ve juxtaposed Fortune 500 companies and startups to share their perspective on how emerging technologies are changing our world. We touch upon consumer culture and our behaviour. It’s been a great learning experience.
