006: When Plan B Turns Out Even Better
Meet Kyle Brown • Cundletown NSW
Bachelor of Business from the University of Newcastle
"It doesn't matter what's happened before you, you can change that narrative to suit you."
Once again we're turning the mic on our own team as we chat to Kyle Brown - he has a Bachelor of Business from Newcastle University, he's the Producer of the Six Degrees Podcast and is the voice you hear at the start & end of each episode! Let's dive in to his University story.
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Transcript
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Intro 00:13
Hey there. Thank you for joining us for Six Degrees of Study: An Uneducational Podcast. Today we have Kyle Brown - that's me! - who has a Bachelor of Business from Newcastle University and currently works at GPB Partners in Taree as an accountant. We want to show you how it's highly likely there's only six degrees of separation between you, the career and the life you want. This is the Six Degrees Podcast.
Meredith Paige 00:37
Your University story goes, we're fast realizing that no two stories are the same, as much as everyone assumes that there's a very generic, copy-paste story when it comes to getting a degree. As context for now, and then we can look back from there, what does your life look like now professionally and personally?
Kyle Brown 00:56
So I'm very comfortable in my life now both personally and professionally. We've a very good life in Cundletown with our two boys, Cristen and I, and we love that. And obviously, professional life - I work for dad, which is great at sometimes and throws up a whole bunch of other issues at other times, but I'm really actually enjoying a career that I never thought I would do or certainly enjoy. So yeah, that's been good. And especially this year through all the challenges of Coronavirus, and what that's thrown up for the accounting industry. That's been a huge, huge learning curve. But it's been really good to see that what I have been doing is actually working and I do actually understand, as stuff's changing and all that sort of thing.
Meredith Paige 01:46
Well, for anyone who isn't across all the amazing things you managed to do with God-knows how you manage to pull off half the projects you do. It's just like it gets to the point where it's like, "Kyle'll work it out, he works everything out". What does it actually you do right now because I think most people would know you in the accounting context, what takes up most of your time now professionally?
Kyle Brown 02:02
So I split my time, as you said through a few different things, I don't like getting bored. So I basically do accounting work. And I deal mainly with individual tax returns and that sort of thing. So I've just come through a crazy time for me. And then on the side, I have UpBound, which is a bookkeeping, small business consultancy service that we basically try and solve problems for small businesses. We don't want to limit ourselves to being one thing or a certain place in the industry. But basically, if someone has an issue in their small business, if we can't solve it, we can find somebody and put you in touch with somebody who can. And then I've got a few other things on the side currently at the moment, I'm very involved in the race course, on their committee over there and loving that as well.
Meredith Paige 02:49
I think that's one of the joys of being in a small town, it's so easy - if you've got a talent and a knack for stuff, it's so easy to be involved in some really cool activities.
Kyle Brown 02:58
The community here is just amazing. Like, the community of Taree, it's so easy to do anything. If you have an issue with anything, there's someone who you know, or you know someone who knows someone that can fix something for you, or whatever it is. It's very easy to get through any of those issues.
Meredith Paige 03:14
I think so many people write off how innovative this area is. There's so many people in this town who will just have a crack at something. They'll be like, "I've seen this done, and it looks like heaps of fun. I'm gonna have a go."
Kyle Brown 03:25
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we have clients in the accounting business that are just doing huge, groundbreaking worldwide things from Taree. They don't get talked about. They don't get celebrated. They don't want to be celebrated. They're just going about their business, but they're doing it in a really amazing way. And I think that gets forgotten. People assume that happens in Sydney or even not even in Australia, just overseas. But it's really happening right here with us in businesses everywhere.
Meredith Paige 03:54
You get that insight being involved in the finances of a businesses, you must get some people walking in the door - you know, Average Joe or Jane walking off the street - you must look at the business' nuts and bolts and go, "I'm sorry, what are you doing?"
Kyle Brown 04:07
Yeah, yeah, definitely. There's a lot of that, they come in and tell you what they do and you go, "Oh yeah, that's pretty open and closed, standard". And then you look further into that business and you're like, "wow, this is amazing what you've achieved here." Because most of them are quite humble people and just, "Oh, yeah. Look, I just do the same as the next guy next to me," but they're doing it in an even better way.
Meredith Paige 04:27
Wow. Again, even if you weren't doing all the other projects, all the other side projects in and around your life, but even if it was just accounting, I don't know if many people imagine that that's a really exciting element to being an accountant. It's just this exposure to all these interesting people you get to work with.
Kyle Brown 04:44
Yeah, definitely. I mean, obviously, it's accounting, it's boring. Everyone just assumes that it's boring. And there's lots of times that it is just sitting at a computer looking at numbers over and over again. But if you've got a passion for that and see that those numbers are actually creating something, that it's those numbers that help people become successful. And I see accounting - as boring as it is - it's very, very integral into the whole psyche of everybody. There's nothing that accounting doesn't creep its fingers into, it's just always there in the background of every single business, there is some accountant somewhere that's helping that business out.
Meredith Paige 05:23
Well you won't ever get to where you want to be, unless you have an appreciation of the numbers it's going to take to get there.
Kyle Brown 05:28
That's exactly right. Yeah, it doesn't matter what you're doing. The numbers are always important.
Meredith Paige 05:33
Yeah, until you embrace that and use that you're always going to hit that ceiling. So we all have this idea of how a typical University story goes: what did yours look like? Coming through the tail end of high school, and then onwards?
Kyle Brown 05:45
So I thought I had life all figured out at 18.
Meredith Paige 05:48
Oh don't we all!
Kyle Brown 05:48
Well 17 actually! I had been pre accepted into the Hotel School down in Sydney. So I basically checked out of high school and went "sweet! I'm just going to have a year to party and go to the beach!" I spent most of my time at my girlfriend at the time's school rather than at my school, that then eventuated into a year of about 52 and went off to the hotel school and spent a year there and just went, "No, I have no interest in this". So it was in Sydney. And I did not enjoy the Sydney city life at all. I was very much a country boy. And so from there, just that experience, I was like, "I don't mind the industry, but I'm just not interested in being down here, being stuck". So from there, I moved back to Newcastle, basically fell into an accounting degree to be honest. Obviously Dad had been an accountant in town for a long time. I had no interest, I was never just going to follow in dad's footsteps. Like, I really wanted to sort of break that because everyone sort of assumed that you would. And I was just like, "No, I'm not interested in doing this." And I always wanted to go to uni, I never really had a passion for a particular subject or anything. But I knew that having that piece of paper would set up lots of other things. So basically, when I was looking I wanted to go to Newcastle, because that's where Cristen was. And I was like, "What can I do at Newcastle that might interest me?" So I started an accounting degree with the idea of probably majoring in economics or finance, because it was a Bachelor of Business where you could sort of pick one of your streams. And then after probably six weeks, it was like, "the only thing that I'm loving here is accounting. I'm gonna do this - with again, no intention of ever becoming an accountant - I'll get the accounting degree, that'll put me into something where I can get a management role or something like that." And then things happened in our life that drew us back here. Cristen actually got a really good internship out at the Mayo. And I was like, "Well, I can get work here because I know everybody. So why don't we come back and just see what happens?" And from there, ended up doing a bit of work for Dad on the side, just with some of his businesses and stuff. And then one of the ladies that GPB actually left, and it was - income tax is a strange role, because it's super intense for three to four months, and then very quiet for the rest of the year. So it was a hard thing to just employ somebody for and Dad said "Oh, look, would you be interested in learning it and taking it on?" And I have, and I haven't looked back. I've been doing that for six years now. And I love it.
Meredith Paige 08:25
There's a couple of things where I'm like "mental note, mental note, mental note." Hospitality school first. Had you had any experience in hospitality? Well, back of house as I would refer to it as?
Kyle Brown 08:34
No, no, none at all. That was just, through late high school, I was going to be an architect. And that was what I'd sort of picked my high school courses all around, doing architecture. And then that just waned a little bit, probably got lazy and architecture is a lot of work. Um, and I don't know why I thought hospitality would be any less work, but I think that was more because there was a Careers Day up here and basically they had a really good sales pitch! I really liked what they were talking about and what it could lead you to.
Meredith Paige 09:07
The nightlife and it's exciting and fast paced and intense and - it's not pouring beers at 3am and trying to do it with a smile.
Kyle Brown 09:13
Exactly right! It's not being friendly to absolutely everybody even when you don't like them and all those sorts of things, then even better I could get an entry and not have to worry about school. I was certainly, I've never been someone who loves education. I've always been after the job at the end. It's a means to an end rather than someone who, I would never go back and study for the sake of studying.
Meredith Paige 09:16
I think that's a really cool point because I feel that there's probably so many people who are - I know TUC is looking at facilitating so many different people at very different stages of life. But for the high school crowd in particular, there's probably so many kids (and this is the big bugbear I have with the current school structure) is that if you aren't loving the academic life, then you're never going to be an academic. That's the dialogue that I think a lot of kids mightn't be told, but that's what they hear. Is if they're struggling to maintain focus at school, or it's just not lighting them up, they think the entire education system is a write off for them. And obviously, for you, it couldn't be further from the truth.
Kyle Brown 10:12
Yeah, that's because I was that kid in school that was always told, "well, if you applied yourself, you could be really good". I had no interest in applying myself.
Meredith Paige 10:20
Yeah. You wanna be really good? You apply yourself!
Kyle Brown 10:23
That's exactly right! I was always focused on the work. So I worked all the way through high school. And I loved that. And I just love the money basically, being able to do anything that I wanted.
Meredith Paige 10:34
It was the transaction that was the reward. it was "I can see tangibly what I'm getting for this outlay, not the buzz of academia."
Kyle Brown 10:40
Yeah, that's exactly right. And then going forward, I knew that in the careers that I was looking at having, I would need some piece of paper behind me. Yeah, basically, that was where I fell into the accounting degree. But as I said, it's certainly been amazing. And I haven't looked back, but there wasn't a time ever, where I was like, "I just want to study! I'm loving studying!"
Meredith Paige 11:03
Gimme books and a library session, and I'm so there!
Kyle Brown 11:05
I hated every minute of it. But I knew that it was something that needed to happen.
Meredith Paige 11:09
I think it was also really cool, too, that you didn't pursue any of this thinking it was the next 20 years of your life. It was kind of a big rangefinding exercise. It's like, "I kind of know the rough direction I want to go in, I feel like this is gonna get me there. But I don't have this cookie cutter idea of what I should be looking like in 20 years, or what life should look like." Because again, I feel like that's the dialogue a lot of people are sold about university is like, "Okay, well, this is a really big commitment. And you need to be like, this is going to be like the next 60 years of your life. So you better make the decision count now" and it's like, "I don't even know what I'm gonna wear tomorrow. Like, I can't make a decision for the next six years of my life now!"
Kyle Brown 11:44
Yeah, especially for the younger people going to university, you just know. As I said, I was being an architect. Then I was absolutely in love with hospitality. And I worked in hospitality, right through my university career, which really good and really handy. It's something that potentially in the next few years, I'm looking at maybe going back into as well. So it's sort of rolls back around. But yes, certainly, I would be happy to do accounting for the rest of my life. But it's not necessarily something that I'm pursuing to go with forever.
Meredith Paige 12:13
And like, what your early 30s now, and again, your switching gears with UpBound. And it's like, there can be so many really beautiful, unexpected gear changes that you just can't foresee all that. You can't realistically pick a degree for the rest of your life, because you don't know what the rest of your life's gonna look like.
Kyle Brown 12:31
That's it, you just don't know. And there's so many experiences that you haven't had even at 30. You go, "I'm really enjoying this, whatever it happens to be, I'm actually going to try and find a career there." Rather than going "no, this is the career that I have. I'll try and enjoy that in my spare time."
Meredith Paige 12:48
Yeah, this is the thing I've married myself to intellectually for the next 20 years. And anything else, if it doesn't align with that, it's not on the radar.
Kyle Brown 12:55
Yeah. And that's exactly what I've tried to do. If I'm enjoying it, I'm going to try and find a way to turn it into a career or a business or something like that.
Meredith Paige 13:03
I think we're in such a really good time for that mindset as well. We're seeing so many examples of anything can be business and entrepreneurship is such a normal thing to pursue and dabble in. You might do a degree for a job that doesn't exist yet. But realistically, that's it. Yeah, like 15 years ago - I teach people how to build their own websites. 15 years ago, it's like "you teach people to build their own what now?"
Kyle Brown 13:27
Yeah, definitely. And at the moment, everything's moving at such a fast pace that you're right. There's not even degrees out there that if you're in year 10 thinking, the degree that you're going to do may not even be available yet. And let alone even the job or the career that you're going into.
Meredith Paige 13:43
It's so important to just focus on what lights you up, because the work will find you.
Kyle Brown 13:47
Yes, absolutely.
Meredith Paige 13:49
So if you hadn't completed that degree, how would your life - I mean, we can already can see how different your life would look now - what do you think it would have looked like now? What would you be missing?
Kyle Brown 13:59
Yeah, definitely. Um, I think it's as much about that backstop as anything and just being comfortable that no matter what else goes on in the rest of your life, there is that qualification that you can go back to. So even if everything else disappears, you've got that, that you can go "Yeah, I can get a job, especially in accounting", because you can do it anywhere. And there's usually lots of jobs going. So it's something that you can go "Yep, I can step into bookkeeping, accounting, management, something that relates to that degree" whereas without that, I think you'd really struggle. I mean, obviously we can't do our job without a degree most of the time. So you can't be a principal and that sort of thing without it so it's very integral.
Meredith Paige 14:44
It's more about the confidence to pursue your passions knowing it's there if you need it. You can back yourself knowing you got a very credible Plan B.
Kyle Brown 14:51
That's exactly right. And and not even that, but in in the Plan A it's there and that knowledge is part of it. And I can go into again, especially with accounting because it's all about the back end of the business, I can go into any other business and know that okay, the accounting stuff sorted, I've then just got to work out what the front of house looks like and go from there.
Meredith Paige 15:10
It becomes this really unexpected springboard that, if it's something that you are passionate about and you enjoy doing, you don't know what you'll be able to turn your hand to with it. So if knowing now that it was certainly not a straight line between high school and now, if someone could have said something to you back then, or what would you wish someone would have said to you back then, especially when it was getting hard?
Kyle Brown 15:37
Yeah, definitely. I think it's as much about just doing it like just jumping in. It was very hard at lots of different times, and at times, I did want to quit certain things, which isn't necessarily a huge issue. Quitting a couple of those initial things was actually really good for me. But once you found something just because it's hard, you don't quit. Like, if there's a real reason for you quitting, then that's fair enough. But as something gets hard, it's that pushing through that really...
Meredith Paige 16:08
It's about checking in with yourself again, what's the bigger picture? Is this still tied to the bigger picture?
Kyle Brown 16:12
That's right, and is it gonna be worth it for me? And yes, if I can see that it is there it is worth pushing through and just running with and dealing with that hard time because not only do I then get through it, but you'll learn plenty from that time as well.
Meredith Paige 16:25
And we've all sort of talked about up until this point, loving the life we've currently got now. But there's still really crappy days, there's no dream deal where you don't ever have a bad day.
Kyle Brown 16:38
Oh, absolutely. And I think those bad days are really important, because it shows you how good the rest of it is, and what else you could be doing sort of thing. You just don't want them to sort of pile up one on top of each other.
Meredith Paige 16:51
You don't want them to be the norm. Someone that's cropped up over the last couple of episodes that I kind of want to highlight is the determining factor in the relationships in when we choose our path. And I'll get you in on this Donna too. Because I feel like there's this is dialogue, where it's like, "if you shape your degree around someone else you're selling out." It's like you shouldn't be choosing your university path on that boyfriend or that girlfriend. And I want to be really careful with this because we really do need to pay close attention to the people that we allow into our inner circle. But all three of us at a young age met the right person that was going to be with us for the long haul. And I know myself, I received a lot of backlash when people found out I was engineering major decisions around the life I was building with my husband. A lot of people thought I was selling out, especially being a girl. With all these opportunities that have been so hard fought for me. It's like, "what are you doing engineering such a big decision? Like, he could just be one bloke, etc." and it's like, I needed to trust myself and be like, "no, this is a really high quality person that I've allowed close to me. And they're worth engineering some pretty big choices around". How did you guys mediate that? Because again, you both met your partner's quite young as well.
Donna Ballard 18:08
That really hits home with me. Especially because I got married, I think two years out of high school. And because I did do particularly well at school, there was lots of flack from family and friends - particularly friends - saying, "well, I'll see you in about six years when that falls apart." They were just absolutely assuming that, yeah, I'd do that path for a while but I would get back onto the career path because I was pretty career driven through school. But I think that's why my husband was so supportive of me doing the degree because we realized we were in it together. Like he knew it was a dream of mine.
Meredith Paige 18:43
You'd found someone who could help facilitate, it wasn't someone who's going to be a stop in that journey, it was going to be someone who helped made it happen, as well as the family and everything.
Donna 18:52
And I mean, I've always been terrible with technology. And I just know sometimes you know, I'd have something crash on the computer or done this whole bloody assignment and about to hand it in, and he'd come and go, "have you looked here?" And I'd go, "Yep. Thank you!" It's that extra support that you get. So yeah, we did go off our paths at the start. But he helped me get back to the path I wanted to take. And he's still really supportive of anything that I do in my career. So it was creates an extra strength. I think it's an extra backup.
Meredith Paige 19:22
But it was probably you having to drown out a lot of what was being said to you, because you knew in yourself that, "No, this isn't just me blindly falling into a relationship that's going to be detrimental. This person is going to add so much value to what I want to achieve. I need to trust myself in that". How did meet that with Cristen?
Kyle Brown 19:38
So I think that's a really funny one that like, as you're leaving school, everyone sort of says, "that's it. You're an adult now. You can go and pick your career and you've got to pick your university degree and that's what's gonna be with you for the rest of your life. All but your girlfriend from high school, she's probably..."
Meredith Paige 19:54
We don't trust you to make that life decision.
Kyle Brown 19:55
That's right! Yeah, you can make all your other life decisions and that have to be made right now. But that one? No. No, you need a bit of experience. Which, in some cases, many people do. They do want to go out and experience all that sort of stuff. But Mum loves telling the story that, after a week of knowing Cristen I came home said, "I'm marrying that girl".
Meredith Paige 20:11
Oh that's beautiful though!
Kyle Brown 20:12
And eight years later I did! But it was just at that time, we just knew. And we've formed an amazing partnership. And going forward, we've always just been on the same page, we've supported each other through any of these things. As I said, I moved home for her career more than mine, certainly. And now, she would love to move away. But because I've got the career here, we sort of decided that this is the best place for us now.
Meredith Paige 20:35
A constant sort of exchange of compromises and support in both ways all along the way.
Kyle Brown 20:40
That's exactly right. Yeah.
Donna 20:41
And I think all the way through with your studies, it's really not something that you do on your own.
Meredith Paige 20:46
No, you don't do it in a vacuum. No.
Donna 20:49
So you need those people around you to be supporting you or guiding you or saying to you, "you know, that's probably not the right degree." Because I did start doing straight accounting, and I just got so bored with that. So I was doing Bachelor of Business. So I was able to flick across into a few different things. So I ended up with a Bachelor of Business with Management and Marketing. But with a strong accounting background, that's given me a broad breadth across everything. But you need people along the way to check in and say, "you know, that's probably not really you".
Meredith Paige 21:18
It's such a hard balancing act between taking on that advice on any facet, whether it's taking on advice about the relationship or taking on advice about the degree. I think it's all about really being protective of that inner circle you create. There's that saying that you are the average of the six or seven people you hang around with most. And so if you hang around with a bunch of 10s, guess what? You're a 10, just by association. It's averages, its numbers. Look at me throwing numbers around as a metaphor! I think it's about, when you get to that 15, 16, 17, I think that's really the tipping point when you can end up with the right or the wrong people around you. Even in like friendship groups, I think it's really important to analyze who is in your inner circle? And what are their vested interests in? What's their experience? And if they tell you something with the confidence like they're right, are they right? Do they have the right to be giving that advice? What's their background on that? Just getting kind of ruthless with who you take advice from, and where you take advice from. But I think, if you've got someone in your life, who is of a high quality, and they feel like they're going to support you with the long haul, keep bringing them along for the ride, you know. And even if that's just a really close friend, you know. There's no right way to do it. But I think we can so often make big decisions based on bad advice on a number of fronts.
Kyle Brown 22:36
Yeah, definitely. Especially again, for the younger kids, they tend to follow their parents, which isn't necessarily a wrong thing. But that just may not be part of your journey. I know, for me, both my parents had a degree. So that was something again - we were speaking about in an episode before - it wasn't pressure, necessarily. But it was kind of just something normalized that I assumed, that was the thing that you did. My younger brother has then gone off and had a really good career without having a degree. So that's been really good as well, to sort of show that it doesn't matter what's happened before you, you can change that narrative to suit you.
Meredith Paige 23:15
And it's always that spill on affecting your kids too. You think about the little micro culture you're bringing your two boys into. They're going to have their uncle who's had a amazing life without a degree. They're gonna have you who's had this really multifaceted life with a degree.
Kyle Brown 23:27
And that's right, and I can pick what's gonna be best for them. So yeah, for sure.
Meredith Paige 23:31
It's all these living examples of the different ways success looks like. So to bring it all back, if you'd in all your travels up and down the coast with all the different lives, what would it have meant to you, to have had access to something like TUC when you were making all these big decisions?
Kyle Brown 23:49
Well, as I said, I think initially for me, with the hotel school in Sydney, the biggest barrier to that was I moved to Sydney on my own, I felt very lonely and isolated, and that sort of thing. Cristen was studying in Newcastle, so we'd only see each other on weekends. And that really got to me, I suffered mentally a lot from that.
Meredith Paige 24:09
Especially because she knew she was gonna be your wife from week one. So wifey was 2 hours away!
Kyle Brown 24:11
That's exactly right. So I think being able to do that, as someone who loves country areas and loves being able to, no commute, get to the beach within 15 minutes, and any of that sort of stuff. I think that would have been a huge deal for me. And I probably would have started on this track a lot earlier. I may not have learned as many lessons but I would have been further into my career at an earlier point.
Meredith Paige 24:39
Yep. Without having to have moved away from support systems. And even like the outer support systems, like your soccer team, or your indoor team.
Kyle Brown 24:47
That's exactly right. And I left that and then when we came back, a lot of those guys had then left or had moved on, and it was sort of hard to then assimilate back into those groups. We found other friends and that sort of thing, which is nice and easy in a town like this, because you can just pick out, you know, soccer team and you've suddenly got a bunch of mates around you. But yeah, to not have had to have left that? I would have seen as a really big plus.
Meredith Paige 25:15
You were probably able to make it through because you had this grounding of this really kind of that idyllic childhood - not knowing heaps about your childhood - but knowing that you had mum and dad. They were both there. They both work. They both had degrees, both supported you. And so you had that foundation. So when you did have to do really big, hard, scary stuff, you did it with a lot of built in confidence from the 17 years prior to that. If you hadn't had that 17 years prior to that the stuff that you stacked on top of it mightn't have stood up.
Kyle Brown 25:43
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think that's why, in a lot of the business sort of stuff that I've started, I've always been confident because I've always had that confidence from from them that you can basically just do anything. And that's what I do! I jump into it with no idea and it works. So yeah, I think that's been really, really key.
Meredith Paige 26:03
Whereas for people who haven't had that really strong foundation to stack all these big scary decisions on top of, having something like TUC there to kind of take away the big scariness of these decisions kind of offsets the foundation they mightn't have had.
Kyle Brown 26:17
Well, that's right. Uni's such a big jump initially anyway, to do it at the same time as leaving home and leaving your support network and - for people up here in a regional area, usually going to a city - there's so many things piled on top of that, that are potential barriers, or at least make it harder than what it needs to be.
Meredith Paige 26:38
Yeah, I think that's the big thing. It shouldn't and doesn't need to be that hard and that's scary. Because it takes away from the fun! It takes away from how fun and exciting that whole process should be.
Kyle Brown 26:46
And that's what it should be. Absolutely what it should be. So it's about having fun.
Meredith Paige 26:50
Well, Mr. Brown here's to having more fun.
Kyle Brown 26:53
Thanks.
Meredith Paige 26:54
Thank you.
Outro 26:58
Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Six Degrees Podcast. This podcast is produced by UpBound Business Consultants and is brought to you by Taree Universities Campus. Based on the New South Wales Barrington Coast, TUC a hub for supporting Distance Education study for university students with campus facilities, mentoring, post grad career opportunities, and more. If you'd like to share your story, you can send us an email at podcast@tareeuni.org.au and let us know your unconventional road to a degree. Until next time.