Nuanced. - 63. Farhan Mohamed: Community, Journalism, Entrepreneurship & the Online News Act

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

Farhan Mohamed is the Co-founder & CEO of Overstory Media Group (OMG), the former Editor in Chief of of the Daily Hive, an Ismaili Muslim and father. In this interview, Aaron Pete and Farhan Mohamed discuss journalism, entrepreneurship, Bill C-18 and making a difference in the community. Farhan Mohamed attended Simon Fraser University and Capilano University. He has worked with Pacific Newspaper Group. From there, he became the editor-in-chief and partner of the Daily Hive. Today, he is the Co-founder and CEO of Overstory Media Group. Through OMG, he aims to reimagine local journalism and reconnect community members. OMG media controls local media organizations like The Coast, Capital Daily, Vancouver Tech Journal, Fraser Valley Current, Burnaby Beacon, Calgary Citizen, New West Anchor, Tasting Victoria, Oak Bay Local, The Westshore, and more.  Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

My name is Farhan Muhammad. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Overstory Media Group. I'm a dad. I am born and raised Vancouverite. And I'm trying to make an impact in my communities. That sounds amazing. Would you mind starting us just with a bit of your background? When did you, when did journalism become on your radar? When did thinking that an informed society was an important element of a healthy community? When did that start to, be an interest of yours. I think in terms of impacting the community has always been something that's been in my blood ever since I was young, being brought up around my grandparents who came over from East Africa almost 50 years ago, getting the sense that you need to leave your community better off than you found it.

Journalism was never something that was honestly quite of an interest to me. I wanted to get into advertising and media a little bit when I was younger, but it just kind of happened by fluke. Yeah, I ended up working at Pacific Newspaper Group, which became part of post-media a number of years ago, and that was kind of my first foray into everything. But I never really, never really wanted to get into journalism when I was younger. It kind of just happened to be and ended up finding that I like connecting people. I like strengthening communities.

I like building bridges. And I like, yeah, I like doing those sorts of things. Interesting. So you describe it as connecting communities. which I think it does, but maybe it's overlooked by most people that they don't put the two together that they're becoming more informed, that there's opportunities to learn about other community members. And to me, that actually makes a stronger social fabric. When did that become a realization for you, that that was something that journalism was perhaps capable of doing?

Yeah, long, long, long time ago. For me, I say it to a number of people, but the way I describe things generally is that I'm someone that doesn't necessarily care about journalism. I care about the community. And because I care about the community, I care about journalism. So everything for me starts with community and starts with that idea. And it was probably just over 10 years ago. Actually, going back even more than that, I used to have a newsletter when I was 15. I used to send it to like, I don't know, 100, 200 people in my little faith-based community. And I always saw this gap that I wanted to know what was happening and no one was really telling me that or if they were it was all paper based and you had to be there in person to pick it up and I said well I have emails

at email addresses I have my own email address why don't I just start sending something out and so I did that for my hotmail account and I just started sending things out and I think it was once a month and I used to just say here's what's coming up and here's what you need to know and I found that as as I kept doing that people ended up finding out that there's things happening and that we can connect with one another. And so it was always finding this way, how do you, how do you build these online, um, online relationships and then see the conversions offline? And so how do we continue building these sorts of things up? And, uh, and so that was kind of like probably one of the, one of the first, um, first instances for me. But even dating back and like, obviously hindsight is

2020 and realizing like as I grew up, I used to have my grandparents and my grandmother especially who would be reading the paper, the Vancouver son. And she would be, uh, cutting out, uh, different stories and articles and bringing them over. And so that was, I think, probably dating back all the way then was when I really saw the importance of journalism, the importance of telling stories, telling factual stories, and seeing that there's an opportunity to connect one another and really bring people together in that way. Wow, that is really well said. Do you were an early adopter of like email. And like I think most people think they're early adopters of email or they use email, but you clearly saw a different potential for email where most people have gotten

used to their spam. I find maybe the Fraser Valley Current in OMG Media, they're taking a fresh look at what email can be instead of what we've traditionally viewed it as. Can you talk about that early stage of utilizing email in that way, seeing the benefit? Yeah, it's almost actually like going back in time. The thing I always say is that like what we're doing is not new. It's not some novel experience. We're taking what the community newspaper used to be, and you're just sending it to people's inboxes instead. We're taking the community newspaper and unbundling it and giving it to people, and they don't need to, you know, leave their house and leave their front door to pick something up. So it's definitely this step back in time to look at things. And quite honestly,

like when we started the company, when we started Overstory, it was with this idea that, you know, for me, I used to get the North Shore News three times a week, and I remember sitting at the dinner table and just opening it up and knowing what stories were going on and getting that that quality knowing that there was a local group and a local team that was giving you local content and you knew it was there was consistent and we said well what if you could do that except just in digital form and so that's when that email newsletter just came to be so powerful

and having that one-to-one relationship and for me thinking back to you know my youth and the way that I used to do things quite honestly just stems from being selfish and saying how do I get the best information in the most timely way consistent knowing that there's quality knowing that knowing and having that routine that you can expect something and I remember getting that with the North Shore News and seeing that with the community paper I know my grandparents used to do that with the Vancouver Sun that every morning they would get it and they knew it was always going to be there always and so you know can we could we replicate something like that? So it's something like the consistency of it, the relationship that

you build over time of just knowing that it's out there, that you're going to be able to have some sort of community relationship kind of dependably where right now we're in a weird time where newspapers are dropped maybe to central location. And so there is more of a you have to go find your news now. Or you get it online on social media platforms and maybe that's a different relationship because it's not kind of a one-stop shop. It doesn't have local community events. It doesn't have all of the context that a newspaper typically has when you have one story that either you really like to see or aggravates you. You kind of get one or the other, and it's one piece. It's not like, here's the 10 things you need to know about what's going on

in your community. Yeah. It's really understanding what is it that people want, what do they need, what sort of values can you, and what value can you give them? I think that's, that's one of the biggest pieces is that, you know, especially when it comes to media, the one thing that you have is trust. It's the easiest thing to lose and it's the hardest thing to gain. And so you have to start with that idea and ask those questions and talk to the community and understand, like, what is it that you're looking for? I think back, you know, a lot of this is like just going back in time to a time that neither

of us were probably alive. but the way where where things like the internet wasn't around and so you think well how did people used to connect well they would go to a local coffee shop or a corner store or wherever and that's how they would convene and that's how and that's and to some extent that's how they still do it today but it was this thing that you knew and you just told people okay we're going to be here at this time and it was set and you built up that routine and you started building these communities from there and then you start building them up and you start adding different people and all that so a lot of it is just thinking around like, what is it that people want? What do they say that they need?

And then what can you give them that they don't know they need? And they don't know that they want. And just start layering in these different pieces, really focusing, starting simple, starting with local, starting with that pride of place that people have in their community, knowing and saying, you know, generally when you start a conversation and someone asks you about yourself, so for me, I'll say, my name's Farhan, I'm born and raised in Vancouver. I live in Coquitlam. I'm a new dad. I work in media. I love the Canucks. I love eating out. I love traveling. I am part of so many different communities

and so many other people are as well, but they'll always, without a doubt, start with that place that they're from. And that's how you describe yourself. If I was asked to you, you would say, hi, I'm Aaron and I'm from this place. 100% of the time people say that. So, you know, I'm from here and this is where I work.

Those are generally the two things. So you start asking those sorts of questions and you start learning about people and learning about what they want, learning about their desires. And then you start asking them, well, what would make your life better? What sort of convenience do you want in your life? What sort of information do you want?

For me, when I left my former company, I was someone who was coming from, I was in media and I was really struggling to consume news and information. And I said, why is it this difficult? There's things that I want. There's all these communities I'm a part of. There's so much information out there. It is so difficult to consume it. I'm going on social media and I'm waiting for an algorithm to do. deliver me content. I'm going on search, but I don't know what I'm searching for. I'm going

on websites, but half the time I don't remember what websites I'm going to. And so you're sitting there thinking, like, I want someone to just give something to me and just deliver it. And I want it to be quality. I don't want it to be crap. I don't want something that's online that, you know, I know a story might have been written in a few minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes and they might have gotten it wrong so they can update it. I want something that is a certain level of expectation. And we're saying as a community, as a collective, we expect more. And when you start to do all these sorts of things, you realize that, well, we can, we can have better.

We don't need to be having, doesn't need to be always focused around the same things and always around clicks and all that sort of stuff. It can be about, well, how do we as a collective think about our community and think about how do we make it better as a whole. That's beautiful. And I like that because there is a problem with trying to stay up to date on certain events or certain issues that are going on because then maybe your own bias of what you think is a problem you start searching that and then you're only consuming that and whereas if you're

kind of you trust the editor you trust the person managing it to say these are the top things that are relevant to your community and while you may not perfectly agree with that one person or think something else should have been added in there is a relationship there of like here are the things we discovered, we've kind of sourced it all out, and this is kind of your day update of what's going on. And that seems like it's being lost? Or what do you think the challenge that traditional... Well, the greater piece of that, or the next step there, is that, well, we know this because we've talked to you. We've had the conversations with you. We know what's going on in your life. You have told us what is important to you. And we've taken the time to have

those conversations. Now having done that, we've now created all of this and we've produced all of this. So you've told us what you want. We've delivered on it. Tell us what's next and build this with us. And so really having that two-way line of communication, communities are a group of people that care about the same sort of things. They care about each other. We need to respect that. We need to honor that. And then we need to build together in that way. I'm interested to know because I really admire people whose faith doesn't dictate but influences how they see things. Coming from an indigenous background, I've had the opportunity to learn about Christian values and indigenous values, and I like to see where they complement each other.

But I'm interested to know you've talked about community and your passion for it and that means a lot to you. Can you talk about how your faith has kind of impacted or assisted in your development of all of these brilliant ideas? Yeah, well, you know, being, so I'm in a minute. a smiley uh in a smiley muslim and for us um like i said in the beginning you know so much of our lives are dictated around uh help each other help not just not just other smilies but help the world um help your community leave it better off than you found it um you know operate in such a way where you're respectful of others you're open and and caring and compassionate and empathetic and all the all of

these sorts of things but you go in with this mindset to say um i i want to help make this better and and you try to put egos aside and you say, look, like, what is the problem here and how can we help each other out? So for me, you know, when my, like I said, when my grandparents and my parents came here, they came with next to nothing. They started building communities with each other, and they started, you know, they worked together. They had no choice. And so when you get to, like, when that's part of your upbringing, these are the stories that are told of how we work together, the stuff that we went through, the turmoil and the speed bumps and all of these things, these roller coasters up and downs, you realize that you can make something of your life

and you can make things, you can build the community with one another. You don't have to do it on your own. You can work with others. And in fact, the best thing to do is to work with others and realize that we're stronger together rather than trying to do things one-on-one. So for me, that's definitely been such a big part of everything that we have to try. We have to think longer term and generationally. For us, we've got our hereditary mom of the time, His Highness the Agha Khan. He is someone that thinks long term and thinks generationally. And so as a byproduct of that, you start to think about those sorts of things in those ways.

And so for me, when I think about media, I think about where are we going to be in the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years, we're going to be, I have no idea what we're going to be in a hundred years. I don't even want to think about that. But if we're only having these conversations about where are we going to be in the next four years, I remember having one conversation or having many conversations with different politicians. And I would ask those questions, like, where do you want to be in 50 years? Where do you want our community, our country? Where do you want us to be? And everyone would always bring it back to, well, let's talk about the next five years. It's like, I don't want to talk about the next five years. If we're not talking about the next

50, then how are we ever going to get there? Let's start thinking bigger than each other. Let's think about that it's bigger than you and me. Let's think about how we can do these sorts of things together. And let's have some moonshots. Let's try to raise the bar. Let's try to think that, you know, anything is possible. And if we start to think like that, maybe we'll start to get there. You know, we can't keep thinking about like year after year. Let's think decade after decade and you know who knows i've always said uh right now especially with the new company best case scenario we we have a giant positive impact in communities we fundamentally change how the news industry works worst case scenario we we we tried that's it you know and so if those are your

two scenarios we tried maybe we failed but at least we tried uh best case scenario this thing could work we can fundamentally change this we can take all of the stuff that people People say we take all the things that are bad about the industry, all the things that nobody wants to do and wants to make better, we can do it. That's the best case scenario. So let's try for that and let's see if we can do it. There is something so courageous about what you just said and why I love entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs because there is this belief that the community, society, our culture is

worth taking a risk on and betting on and that there isn't a better option. There isn't a plan B that we're going to be able to hold on. to. But you also talked about, in indigenous culture, we have this idea of seven generations, which I love because you were just sort of describing it, which is that we're called on to look back, seven generations back, and learn about our family lineage, our community, the leaders, the real movers and changers, and then look forward seven generations and try and develop based on what we understand about the past. It seems like some of my peers, though, aren't as interested in that looking back and understanding and admiring perhaps the people who

served in World War II, who endured things like the Great Depression, they're not as passionate about that. But you speak so highly of your family. Can you just talk about how your family has sort of shaped you or motivated you? Because the thing I admire about people who look at their parents and go, they went through a lot. So now I've got some work to do. I think that that's so admirable. And I think anybody can do that, even if, like, I don't have, I don't know who my father is, but I can look at my mother and my grandmother and go, wow, they endured Indian residential schools. They endured the 60s scoop. So I better get my act together because I don't have those burdens on my shoulders.

I have work to do to kind of live up to the legacy they built. Yeah, well, I will just say the funny thing that we as society don't talk enough about is the fact that we are so alike, your culture, my culture, like, and, There are so many others. We all share the same sort of similarities. And so we oftentimes, we talk too much about what makes us different. But in reality, you know, the things that we're talking about right now, it just tells me, like, we are so much the same.

And we need to celebrate that and talk about that. For me, yeah, my family, you know, my dad is a serial entrepreneur. My mom is someone who works for the federal government. I have two very different mind frames that. that have been part of my upbringing. And so on one side, it's you want stability. You want the, you want to go down that path. You want overtime and you want to make sure you're working a certain number of hours.

You want to be thinking about long term. You want to have your pension, all that. That's one side. The other side of the equation is go take your moonshots and see if they're going to pay off and see if they're going to work. Try and fail and keep going. and if you, like, when you fail, because it will happen, pick yourself up and go do it again and keep trying and trying. And, you know, if one out of 10 works, that's great.

If one out of 20 works, that's still great. But, yeah, this constant up and down and these both sides of it, I think it's definitely helped me with that and help me along the ways. Just thinking around you, how to carry yourself, how to live life, how to treat others. But at the same time, how, like, based on your aspirations and things you want to do, how do you set your goals higher and at the same time also, you know, not get too lost along the way? That is really good advice. What was the journey through working at the different media organizations and what kind of decisions had to go into each one in order to, because it sounds

like you're really good at analyzing risk based on two, well, you have the tools to really look at risk. What was that sort of experience like to move between organizations and kind of reimagine where you want to take your own life. Yeah, well, it almost, I will say, it definitely goes back in time a little bit. So when I was in, I was that kid that was in high school that I didn't really care about school.

I was volunteering. I was putting my time into community service. Probably too much time. But I always, that was always what I was wanting to do. Just go and volunteer and serve the community. You know, log your hours and that kind of thing. And then, and the problem with us, though, is that I didn't have the best grades. And so when I was thinking about where am I going to go to

school, I said, well, I don't have many options in front of me. I ended up going to SFU, which was great. But I didn't have the grades to go to business school, which is what I wanted to do. So I was doing arts. I had no idea what I was doing. University was really challenging for me. I didn't transition into it well. And I didn't know what I was doing. And I was not, I didn't have the best grades and failing courses and whatnot. And then something hit me and I said, hey, I really like CSI. And I think I want to go into criminology. Again, no idea what I was doing, but that ended up being my path for a few years.

And then, and at the same time, I was focused on, you know, social media and building up Twitter and just trying new things out and seeing what was happening. And right around 2010, 2011, a friend of mine approached me and said, hey, I'm thinking about running in the federal election coming up, you seem to know a bunch of young people and you seem to be good on social media. You know, could you help me out? I had no idea much about politics, but I said, yeah, that could be fun. What the hell? Why not? And I ended up running his online campaign. And it was such an experience and so many people said to me, why aren't you doing this for school? Why aren't you doing this for life? And so that was one of the turning points in life.

And so I kind of left things to fate. And I said, all right, well, I didn't go and I didn't write a final exam. I ended up failing a number of courses, did not tell my mother. And I said, okay, I'm going to leave this to fate, though, before I tell her what's happening. And the fact that I'm not writing exams and she's going to kill me. And so I said, all right, I will apply to a couple different schools. I'm going to change up my life here. People are telling me that I'm good at this.

I'm enjoying this. I'm spending all my days doing this. So I said, all right, if we lose, I'm going to go to Capulano University and I'm going to study business. I'm going to stay home, which was like five minutes away from home at the time. If we win, I'm going to go to Ottawa and I'll get my degree there and I'll finish school and not really know what to do, but I'll probably have a job in Ottawa. We ran a good campaign. We ended up losing. And I stayed home, went to school, told my mother what had happened.

And luckily, you know, kind of derisking. I said, okay, mom, like, I've applied. I'm probably going to get in. So I have some options on the table. But I ended up going to school locally, studying business, excelled at school, did really well because I was doing stuff that I actually enjoyed doing. And that was the big, that big turning point in life. And right around that same time, I then hooked, I then worked one summer at the Vancouver Southern Province, really understanding just how crazy the media landscape was about to be. and this was back in the early 2010s around the same time I ended up me sorry how did you know that

how did you know oh you know when people say you see writing on the wall yeah I saw like more than that things that that just didn't make sense and at the time I was doing some advertising sales and things just didn't make sense to me like why are we selling full page ads for tens of thousands of dollars when you have no idea who's reading this. You have no idea the results of this. So I'm trying to sell this when I don't even believe in this. This doesn't make any sense. Well, then you'll say, okay, well, we get this in front of X amount of people. We know that it's circulated. Cool. But how many people are actually reading this? You have absolutely no idea. You don't know if they took action. You don't know almost anything. And so that was one

of them. There were a number of other things that had happened. But as a younger person in that sort of environment, I said to myself, this is not, something's going to happen here. This industry, you can already see the internet has started to change it, but something's going to break. And it's going to break very soon. There are too many people that are working here, not doing enough. They're really focused on making money. When you opened up the paper, they didn't, they didn't even focus on digital. I think the teams were like, you know, 90% print, 10% digital back in 2012. So the writing was definitely on the wall and I saw that. And then at that same time, I ended up, I knew through Twitter, one of the founders of what was then Van City Buzz,

now Daily Hive. And we ended up talking and I said, hey, I think I can help you guys out. So came into that, what I thought was a big established organization ended up being a little passion project that people used to meet once a week. helped out from there, ended up working on it pretty much around the clock, even while I was in school and finishing school. And ended up doing that for a number of years. I'm like totally going off on like all these different storylines. So yeah, tell me where you want me to go. Absolutely. So what I find interesting is that you saw Twitter and you were an early, it sounds like an early adopter. Whereas for my understanding, it's something like one in ten

Canadians actually use Twitter. It's something not. like Facebook is much more used. What did you see in Twitter in those early days? Oh, the community building was just fantastic back then. This was like 20, 2000, I think I got on in 2009. So, so let's say between like 2008 and 2012, 2013, something magical happened. And Twitter was a big part of that where it was so easy to meet people. A lot of, a lot of guards were down.

And so it was really simple to get to know one another. It was really simple to not just grow following by numbers, but grow your following by quality. And so based on the things that you were posting and tweeting, you ended up aligning with different sorts of people and you ended up following each other because of that. In Vancouver, things were also very different. 2010, the Olympics happened. Gigantic moment in the community where people started to, you know, connect more with one another. 2011 Stanley Cup. Canucks, Stanley Cup run.

Canucks go almost all the way. and all of these sorts of people were coming together. So it became okay to share those commonalities. It became okay to connect with one another. It was okay and almost like unfiltered, where you didn't really care what you were saying. And this was also the case with social media back then. You used to post pretty much anything without caring

and you used to just build friends in that way, online friends. So that's how things were early on. I think nowadays, you know, everyone's really careful about what they say or almost everyone. You're really thinking about the things that you're posting. You're thinking about, you know, who is this going to be seen by? Who could screencap this? How could my life get altered and all those sorts of things? So it was definitely a different time for the Internet and social.

I think it's even how like TikTok was maybe two years ago where people were just trying. and posting all these random different things. Today it's, no, it's still some of that, but it's becoming more refined. So any early days and early adopters, they'll go and just try anything. And people are, you know, they want to connect with one another.

They want to talk to one another. They want to share experiences and share their commonalities. But it was a very different time then. Do you have particular, like I have a different perspective on the tool that is social media for each one. Like, Instagram, it's obviously photos, videos, like Facebook is much more long-form communication. And then there's LinkedIn and Twitter. And I like LinkedIn because it's somewhat reliable.

It's somewhat honest. But then there is, I don't know if you've seen the meme, but it's like somebody's getting their driver's license. But the quote is like, I would like to hereby announce that I am now the new established driver. and the province of BC has enacted me and an ability to drive down the road. So there's a little bit of chest puffing or something like that. How do you see kind of social media now? And like, do you have a preferred platform that you think is more authentic? Oh, more authentic.

I mean, it's it's up to you, really. Anything can be as authentic as you want it to be. You can also put as much BS as you want. I don't know if I necessarily have a preferred. I think they all have different places. I have different, you know, I'll call them different communities, different followers, different audiences for each one. So it depends, you know, what am I trying to say

or what sort of response am I trying to get? You know, I enjoy almost every platform. I think it all has different use cases. At the same time, it's not all of them are for everyone. the same thing could be said for both individuals and also businesses. You don't need to be on everything. I know people who have abandoned some of these platforms because they think that they're bad. Well, you know, how old are you connecting with one another?

So, you know, I personally, I use Twitter pretty frequently. I use, yeah, I use Twitter and Instagram the most. I think LinkedIn has now become a space for a lot of junk, which is what like Facebook used to be. So, you know, it's all like depends what you want it to be. You can curate it. You can make it exactly what you want. I think all the different algorithms have definitely affected how people are sharing and how they're consuming.

I was just looking at YouTube earlier today. and I've been watching a bunch of Shark Tank videos and now 90% of my preferred videos and suggestions are all Shark Tank videos. I'm like, this is crazy. I don't want this. I want to explore other things that are going on, but that's just how it happens.

So you have to understand what's happening. You have to realize that, for the most case, you know, these are different algorithms that are serving you different sorts of content. TikTok is the exact same thing. LinkedIn is the same thing. Twitter, unless you're looking at the real-time feed, they're all the same things. You have to go unconsciously knowing these are the sorts of things that you're going to be getting.

But you have to think about, you know, what am I trying to tell the world and tell my followers and tell this community them a part of? And who is part of it? Have I let people in? Is this public or private? Like, these are all these sort of things. So it almost becomes a little bit scientific in some ways. Yeah, you have to be intentional about it. I'm interested. You just said Shark Tank, and I find when I started my law school journey, I didn't know where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do with it, but I came out basically thinking that economic development, entrepreneurs, they are the lifeblood of our economy, of our culture, of, they are the problem solvers of our society, and they are incredibly necessary, and they take on an incredible amount of the risk for our culture.

so that we can, like when we have a problem, I think typically best solved by entrepreneurs who can figure out a better way to deliver a similar product that's going to give you all of the benefits with none of the detrimental effects. And then when there are new detrimental effects, they're the people who go in and go, how do we get rid of those? And so I think that that's typically how it's done. I think that my hope is to help indigenous entrepreneurs kind of reach the market because we don't know how much people's faith or values,

impacts the ideas that they bring forward into the world and so right now I would say that we have a low amount of indigenous entrepreneurs and so we don't know how they could maybe I would predict that they'd have a larger impact on the environment so their kind of innovative nature of like what the traditions are within the culture like we previously we didn't cut down trees we would cut half of the tree so that we wouldn't hit this one part so that the tree would continue to live so we'd use the tree without having to kill kill it and there's just a like there's something interesting about that where there's like an entrepreneurial entrepreneurial opportunity there that I think could be explored. What is that like for you? Do you, I find Shark Tank inspiring just at least with the idea that one person can make a difference through an idea that they have. What motivates you to continue to be an entrepreneur and kind of have a passion for problem solving?

Yeah. I mean, what motivates me is seeing the impact. You know, being an entrepreneur is not easy. And I think shows like Shark Tank and Dragon's Den and all these different podcasts, I think glorify that, you know, entrepreneurship is easy. You make some, you raise some money or you get some sort of seed capital from somewhere. You go do your thing and cool, bam, you're the next unicorn and you're making tons and tons of money. the other side of it is that most of them fail most startups are failing and and it's a very

difficult thing to do um i think the the biggest thing that we need is is more people to take more chances on more people and and give opportunities and and look and say that you know not everything um like not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur not every idea needs to get turned into something. I've seen this more and more, I think, a lot more lately that people are just trying things. And I love to see people trying to do things that are not in their wheelhouse. I like to see more on the flip side. If something's in your wheelhouse, go and do it. You know, you know this, you understand it better than anyone. But yeah, when you talk about motivation, it's definitely the impact. it's definitely like that sense of like you had this this thing that you thought could be better

and did you to go and try and learn from that you know take that and go then learn and do something else from there and that's definitely what I've done when I think about when I think about my past and you go do it you try it you try to succeed you try to make it work you try to have impact you try to do all these sorts of things and then at a certain point you say okay either you know voluntarily or involuntarily and you say, okay, well, you know, that's it. I've learned a lot here. Now, how do I go and take this into the next place? I go and, uh, and create. What is the weight that you carry on your shoulders? What is the, the challenges that you fate? Like, some people struggle with anxiety and

depression. I think that that's often because they're maybe disconnected. Um, obviously there's mental health issues, but a lot of the time it's that I think people aren't doing things that bring the meaning in their lives or they don't see the meaning. that can be found in the things they're already doing. Like, maybe you have a family, but you're not talking to them in a meaningful way, and so you're disconnected, and then you're like, well, what's the point in this whole life thing if my family isn't giving me value or my work? And so there's sort of this sense of emptiness.

But when you're carrying the weight that you're carrying in terms of you're trying to grow something, you're trying to make a difference in the community, and there is this, this background fear of like, what if it doesn't work? And I'm just interested to know, is that difficult to carry? Is it something you have to work through through exercise and trying to eat healthy and take care of yourself and have strong relationships with your family so that there's like how do you just how do you manage that? You ask a good question. So for us where we are today, we have almost 50 full-time people and that on its own. is something very difficult to to think about.

And you are always worried about their livelihoods. And, you know, I'm always told that, you know, disconnect yourself and you have to be a little cutthroat and you have to do all these sorts of things and, you know, business decisions override everything. But that's also a very difficult thing to do. And every time you learn more about people and you learn about their families and these sort of things you realize that these people and their livelihoods and their families are now part of your responsibility. And we gave a bit of a talk to our company recently. And one of the

things that I was saying is that like startup life is not easy. And it is very difficult. And whenever we have to make a difficult decision, I think there's this misconception, even in not just in our company, but everywhere, that, you know, people are ruthless, cut through, whatever, you have to make decisions and move on with it. But, you know, every time that we have to let someone go, it is agonizing. It hurts inside. In some part, to me, it tells me, oh, you failed. You couldn't make that work or you couldn't work with them or whatever they were doing

didn't make sense. But it is challenging. And there's this challenge because you both want to, you want to succeed. You want to, you know, you think that you can do it. And so you want to prove it to yourself. You have a number of people who've said kind of like, to an extent you're crazy, and this doesn't make sense. And why would you want to do this?

And you want to prove it to them. You might have some frenemies in the past that you want to prove it to them as well. and you know you want to you want to make a bigger thing it is it is constantly challenging and you have to find happiness in your life for me I'm a relatively new dad and so the the pure joy and happiness that I get when I look at my daughter beats everything hands down that is something that that is a level of happiness I have never experienced in my life and changed my life, changed everything. I now, you know, I want to spend less time working so I can spend more time with her.

I also want to spend more time working so that I can have a better future for her. So it's, you know, you're trying to juggle that at the same time. I think people need to find things that make them happy outside of the work that they do. I think they need to have discussions and talk and as open as you can with one another. I'm very, mental health has become such an important piece for me personally. I've gone through craziness over the past number of years.

And, you know, I think getting to that point that you can say to yourself and accept that you're, not okay and and it is okay to do that it's okay to go and seek help and say to someone that I'm not doing okay and I need to talk um I think we as as entrepreneurs don't talk about that enough and I now have a number of friends who say and we talk about you know hey you know are therapists and when we go to therapy and things like that I think we need to make it more normalized. I think there's there are so many things that everyone is dealing with at any given time and financial pressures and employee satisfaction, families, like all of these things

that you start adding up, you realize that there are a lot of things going on. And it is very, very difficult. It's also very lonely. There are things that you want to talk about that you can't. And you have to be okay with that. These are the side effects that nobody ever sees because you don't talk about it because you can't talk about it. And you shouldn't talk about it. So it's difficult. How do you, how did it come about to start OMG media? Was this something that you were excited about or did you see the problem and said there needs to be some change here and we can be that change because we can see this potentially working. Where did it kind of, where did the roots start? Yeah. So a lot of it,

like I was saying earlier, a lot of it was kind of like selfish. When I left my former company, I took a couple months off before my daughter was born and I was really struggling to consume information and news. And I started examining like what was happening in our industry. And I was looking outside of Vancouver and I was looking across Canada and looking what was happening around the world. And I said, this needs to be better. I think we can make it better. I ended up meeting my business partner or my now business partner and having a number of conversations. And he started up a little newsletter in Victoria because he said, I want better local news. And no one is providing it. So I'm just going to go do it and start it. And so along the way,

start having these conversations of like we can have better we can provide better quality content and storytelling better information we can be better conveners of the community and you know and that was kind of the start of it that that we think it can be better let's go try it and so we started with one publication and we started creating more and started finding really good really good journalists and editors and creators and we said if you could focus on the things that you want to focus on what could you do and so that became the that became the start of it and we realized that as we as we continued on we realized that there is so much opportunity that if you start just thinking about things in a bit of a different way and so and we started talking about what are the problems

that exist in media well everyone's out for money okay well maybe maybe it doesn't have to be just about money. You focused on big clicks, big audiences, big everything. Okay, well, what if you put a ceiling on that? What if you really focused on niche communities? What if you focused on, you know, like I said earlier, the different communities you're a part of? What if you focused on each one of those individually? What if you found people in those communities to lead those communities and create for those communities? And so you start asking like, what if, and you add all of those up and you say, okay, well, let's do that. Let's start with that. Let's, let's see if that works. And so then you, you know, we look at a community as far as like the Fraser Valley Current

and the, the pure impact that they've had because they are run by people in the community who care about the community and all they care about is what's happening in the valley. That's it. They don't really care about anything else. And, and you give them that the, the, the, the freedom in independence and autonomy to go and create whatever they think is necessary, to go and meet with the community, talk to them, talk to different individuals and residents and business leaders, and you say, you know, what are the problems that exist here? Let's talk about that. What sort of things do people want to know?

What's missing? Let's answer all of those different questions. Let's bring them all together. And let's say our quality is going to be by far the best thing out there. that is our level that's our bar and um and and so that's uh yeah that's generally where most of it starts is that that something something needs to be better and let's go see if we can make it that's incredible because i did watch i don't know if you've seen him but um i'm forgetting his name but he does the patriot act which i don't think is continued yes and he did one on

on local journalism and it scared the crap out of me because you realize how important local journalism is. On a side, he talks about specifically how in Florida there was this local journalist who was looking into Jeffrey Epstein and how often important stories are broken by local journalists, not by the big conglomerates that you kind of think of as the place to go to for your news. And so when I saw that, I was left with a sense of concern over all of the talks of where local journalism was going and the challenges it was facing. As I'm sure you know, it was like our, in Chilawak specifically, we had like news organizations combining and getting smaller. And the feeling that I've always had since watching that was, what are we going to do? Like this,

we can't just not know what's going on in our community. That's like, that's not an option. But there isn't viable alternatives. And it was actually my partner who sent me the first Fraser Valley current article. And it blew my mind because it was like, this is really, well thought through. This is this is the facts. This is like research because the one confusion I feel like I've always had is how is there a university right near us yet often are like our news articles have no research or like kind of evidentiary information of like this is what salmon populations should be. This is what the problems are and according to this like having a logical connection and writing long enough for me to follow the whole story. And so when I saw that, it was huge

inspiration for me like somebody's working on this problem and then so i started following them and then i started looking into who is doing this who is making these impacts and that's when i came across yourself um and omg media and going like wow this is exactly what i think we need like it was so like the puzzle piece was missing and then all of a sudden this piece came in is that the response that you felt like you got broadly you sort of talked about the naysayers um and i think they often act as inspiration but when you were developing this was there a whole bunch of love towards this idea yeah yeah the love is real and uh and that's generally where we start things from and um you know when when we start talking about these different um smaller communities that we're a part of that's when you

that's when you start realizing just how much potential there is because you don't need to to to be read and and seen by millions of people when your community is you know like let's talk Fraser Valley, 400-ish thousand people, that's a relatively small community. And then you go breakdown by breakdown and look at all the different municipalities and whatnot. And you realize that you actually, if you're talking to like dozens of people or a few hundred people, you're having a, you're already having a big impact. So the numbers end up becoming a little bit smaller in that way. And you're realizing, okay, look, we can we can start talking to smaller groups. It doesn't have to be big everything. But when you start like kind of bringing everyone under that tent and you

say look we're all here we're all local we're all this sort of thing start small and and you start seeing the first 10 20 50 hundred few hundred and it starts growing from there and the response that that we've got into every single thing that we've launched early is this is phenomenal uh where have you been all my life we needed this thank you and that has been honestly the response every single time we've launched and and built something and so that always gives us the motivation that okay we know what we're doing in that way we know what every community is as as as unique as each of them is 80% 90% they're all the same they all want the same things need the same things and so all you have to do is just find those people that that care and and there are a lot

of them and you start asking those questions of you know okay what what sort of information do you need to know on a regular basis uh whenever something's major we'll talk about it but what else is there that's going on and there can be questions like uh you know you know, the unsexy stuff. Like, why are their potholes and why are the potholes not fixed? What's going on with garbage collection? Like, these are the things that matter so much to locals who see themselves there for a long period of time. And that ends up being the core of everything we do.

And you start asking those sorts of questions. Like, okay, like, tell us what you care about. Tell us what problems you see. Tell us what things need to be discovered. And then at the same time, we say, like, what are those hidden? in gems that exist that you might know that a handful of others might know that we need to shine a spotlight on so that we can tell other people. And so you end up seeing this thing that ends up being built where it's this two-sided, you know, on one side, okay, you're going uncovering

all of the stuff that's going on and the crazies. And then at the same time, you're also discovering all the cool things that are happening and the people that are building the community. And more often than not, their stories are not told. And all of a sudden, you'll see there, you know, generally you'll end up seeing the maybe going they're getting their names built up in a Facebook group or something like that or it just stays in a very small circle and so we're trying to do is say let's let's grow that circle a little bit and and let's bring that light and show that there is a future here that to your to your earlier point like yeah what's going to happen to our democracy what's going to happen where you're getting information if

nobody is watching as an example what's happening at city halls who's who's going to who's going to actually talk about that who's going to tell you that hey your taxes are going up by x amount because of x y and z well it probably would have been good to know when the discussions happened and when the proposals were coming forward but if no one's there your community will fundamentally change and so this ends up becoming the the long-term problem and opportunity where you just have to put eyes in the right places and you need to have enough of them that are watching what's going on they you need to be asking the questions demanding answers and then when you don't get the answers you just go back and you tell the people um you know this is this is what's going on this is why it's happening this is what

we're trying to do if you would and then there and then you have to give some sort of call to action like if this is bothering you here's what to do if you would like to support here's what to do um you know if there's a restaurant that is that is on the verge of going bankrupt and needs help here's how to go and book a table and here's what you can do. So it can happen on both sides. I don't think it can be just this like one trick type thing. It can't just be, okay, we're going to uncover all the shady stuff that's going on. You have to also do the other side of it.

Absolutely. Can you tell us about the product, the newsletter itself? Because as I spoke with Tyler Olson about, I think one of the keys to success, one of the gems, is that first paragraph where it's just a human being being a human being because particularly in Chilliwack we have journalists from established media

and they don't come across as human beings with empathy and with an understanding that of course people are going to disagree with you and they have every right to do so because we live in this democracy and some people might have views you don't agree with and they might be wrong but they're human beings at the end like there's that sort of disconnect

when you, and to their credit, when you get hated on, there's an instinct to want to defend yourself and want to respond. But that first statement of like my, I think Grace Kennedy did one that I just sticks in my memory of like, oh, we were up in the middle of the night doing like trains and we had this train space. And it was just like, you're a human being like with life challenges and family at home. And so was that like early on part of the plan to do that? Yes. Yes. Yeah. And And if you don't know, if you don't know what Aaron's talking about, and if you live in the Fraser Valley, current.com, FraserVCurrent.com and sign up for the newsletter. It comes out every weekday.

The one biggest piece that we've been trying to do is just show that we are all in this together, that we are all humans, we're all neighbors, we are not on some sort of vigilante mission to see some sort of end, that we're just like. you and when you get to do it in that way and you start and you start to try to build it in that way you show that you show exactly what it is that we're trying to do you show that like like look you can come and throw throw sticks at us but like hey we're your neighbor like we're facing the same problems and so every single thing that we've done um at least i think has been has been very deliberate very thought out very um yeah very deliberate with this idea that we

want to we want to just be human we want we want to show that media can be different that news can be different that reporters and editors and these newsrooms can be approached in a different way and so we have to do things differently we have to show that that we're one of or one of the community and so yeah i think every every publication of ours does the same sort of thing it's you just act human you just just be yourself um with that there's a few things though is like be respectful of one another, be respectful of your community, and never go and call out people for something that they might disagree with. In fact, that's almost an open door right there is, okay, someone doesn't agree with you. Have the conversation with them, talk to them and understand their side of it

and understand where they're coming from. And, you know, this could be your neighbor. This could be someone that's down the street. This could be on the other side of the neighborhood type of thing. We're all in this together. And so because of this sort of, thing we've realized and we found that we're generally not alienating people. And it is this very big tent that everyone's a part of. And so, yeah, it works really well. We're always trying to see that how can we adapt and how can we build it and how can we change it. The newsletter is the core of what we do. It's not the only thing. So we're looking to see, you know, how can we have those one-to-one relationships and then what's next? So you've got the website that's got all these

different articles on it and then we're looking to see okay look um like the event and the panel you are part of you know okay let's take experience as an event and let's bring people together and and so there's a number of things that we're looking at that you know how do you how do you just start one thing and get people all together and then how do you start adapting from there and and creating value is ultimately what it comes down to if we are doing something that is not creating value for community members we ask the questions like why are we doing this We don't want to do things because we think it's a good idea. We want to do things because others in the community think it's a good idea.

And if enough of them think that, well, then we've hit something and we've hit success. So it's constantly evolving and adapting and looking at different ways that we can continually bring value, bring more convenience as well to people's lives. Everyone is too busy. They have too many things that are going on. From the feedback that we get, and myself included, is that we do not want to be sitting there on social media, scanning on an hourly basis. and, you know, trying to, like, doom scroll and see what's going on. There is just too much going on. I think the past, I think the past two and a half years have shown,

shown us as society that it is okay to slow down. It is okay to focus on things that are important to you. You don't need to know everything that's going on at every given moment. I'm someone that fell in that boat. I was on, I am partly because of my work, but I used to be on Twitter all the time. I used to know every story that was happening in the community, like 90% all the time. And it's a very exhausting thing to do. But more than that, you realize that there are so many other things that are important in life.

And more to that, there are so many things that are not in your control. So rather than sitting there trying to follow along the news and follow all these different cycles and follow on social media and worry about things that are not in your control, what if you spent most of your time focused on the things that are in your control and focused on things that bring you happiness and focused on things like your friends and your family and different hobbies that you might have and so for me that was like a fundamental shift that i made a couple of years ago and i realized that i don't need to be doing this i i'm i'm unhappy sitting there on twitter all day long why am i doing this now i go on a few times a day not you know i don't have it on on my screen that's open all time at all times. In fact, especially I've noticed this over the last couple of weeks, I'm missing stories. And I have, in some cases, I don't know what's going on. And so I'm almost like making myself that, that normal person that wants to consume, but doesn't want to do it at all times of the day. Right. In your conversation for listeners, Farhan sat down with Michael Geist and they did a podcast together. And if you want to understand more about Bill C-18 and what's going

on in terms of spending. I think that that's an excellent overview and an understanding of kind of what's going on in the challenges that that bill has. But in that, you also talked about trust. And I liked that because that is what I see a lot of people who don't like our local news in its traditional form. They kind of say, like, it's too skewed. I don't trust their opinions or I don't feel like they're being objective anymore. But with yours, there's that first entrance paragraph that's usually just about who the human being is and what they're going through. But then you also highlight other news articles, which I also feel like builds trust because it doesn't feel like you're in competition or trying to say that these are all

terrible and we're unique. And I see independent journalists do this a lot, which is you can no longer trust the establishment. You can trust me now. And I think that there is a benefit to that, which is that now you have somebody's reputation at stake, which is you're trusting them. So if they lose that by doing a bad piece or saying things that aren't true, then they lose their trust and they lose their audience, which I think is good. I also think they leave themselves open to audience capture and falling into what does the community I built want me to say and how do I regurgitated in the latest form? You've done a good job of kind of making sure that that doesn't become a plight against any of your staff because you can go read other articles by the CTV. by CBC, by other news organizations in the area who've done a good job carrying that.

Was that deliberate as well not to maybe go against the traditional media? Yeah. Well, and it's to my earlier point, too, is that I want us to be the best community publication, and that's it. And choosing that language very carefully, we could say we want to be the best news outlet, but being the best news outlet and the best community publication

are two different things. We're here to serve the community and give them as much information as they need. We also know that we don't cover everything. And so why would we go in and try to, and why would we not give people that information if it exists out there? One of our editors, our managing editor at Vancouver Tech Journal, recently said something which really, really stood out to me. And so Vancouver Tech Journal started as a little passion project. It's now, I think, become the authority for all things tech and innovation in and around Vancouver. We've got almost, I think, 20,000 subscribers.

And they are the best combination. And they are a true community publication in my eyes. And our managing editor Kate said this is that she realized it's not just a news outlet. What they do is not just news. What they do is community. there to serve the community and community is their product. And so when you start with that idea and you start with that mentality, you realize that it's not just about the stories you make and create and produce and publish. It is about the relationships that you're making. It's about the trust that

you're building. It's about these different bridges. And so you have to find that right balance between everything where you are, where you're telling the news and you're reporting on things and you're uncovering things going on, but you are also conveners and you're there to bring people together. And when we look at that long-term goal and that long-term growth and where we want to be, we want to be in that space. When you're thinking about who's telling the stories and being the voice of the Fraser Valley, I want you to say it's the current. They're the ones that are doing that. They're the ones that we go to for trust. They're the ones that we go to who will tell us what's going on.

They'll tell us to an extent right from wrong. But there are also ones that are going to bring us together. And we might be going to an event that they're holding and we might be wearing their t-shirt and, you know, and these sorts of things. And at the same time, we will also tell them what we want to see next. So it goes so much further than just the news. I have often said even to our teams is it's no longer. it's no longer enough to just do good journalism.

You have to start thinking about, you know, what else is out there and how do you connect with your communities and how do you build with them and build that trust? And so, yeah, there's so much more than just the news. Absolutely. Can you tell us the various organizations that you're currently leading? Because there's the Burnaby Beacon, there's the Fraser Valley Current, there's the tech, the Vancouver Tech Journal.

Can you tell us about the ones that are currently available for people? So we've got a dozen of them. So we've got a bunch on Vancouver Island, a bunch around the lower mainland, one in Calgary and then one out in Halifax. And then we're also looking at, you know, more that we can get into and both through starting from scratch or even acquiring and building. And so, you know, we're looking at different things. So if you're in the lower mainland, we've got Fraser Valley Current, Burnaby Beacon,

New West Anchor, Vancouver Tech Journal, and then we've got a few more that are in the works that we're trying to get off the ground. Interesting. So when you see, I don't know if you saw the Halifax Examiner came out with their story, is that something that interests you in terms of journalists within your organization

being able to deliver those type of stories or are you more interested in staying with the community? Because I interviewed Honorable Darrell Plekis and he really dives into the problems that we're facing in regards to journalism. And from his perspective, he felt like he was not given the platform to speak on certain issues. And even when he was, that the journalists were not receptive to wanting to publish what he had to say about the issues. And so from our conversation, I don't think I'd be misrepresenting him to say that he felt like he got a skewed kind of handling. And his point was that a lot of the people who are used to working in the legislature,

they have a relationship with the people there and they don't want to constantly stir up shenanigans and so they have a relationship with the politicians there and they try and keep a good, healthy working relationship. And so there's an incentive not to maybe rock the boat as much as he was willing to, from a criminological perspective, of being someone who's been famous for hating corruption. And so his perspective was like, I did not,

the only people he kind of said gave him a fair shake was CTB. And that was very concerning to him to just not be able to get his message out there and that there was sort of a wall up against him. I'm just interested, is that an area that you're interested in addressing or is that community more the focus? So looking at the stirring of shenanigans in politics always causes people to pick one side or the other,

which is very divisive, which can lead to not building a community. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, we're as focused on the community as possible. We also know that there are many communities within communities. And so we're looking at different ways and talking to different people. And our biggest thing is that at least to start with, we don't want to alienate, you know, different people. We don't want to divide different groups, especially when we're talking about different neighbors and living in the same place.

We want to start with that mindset of, okay, let's bring everyone together and talk about the similarities. let's talk about the things that will bring us together and then have discussions from there. And let's talk about the things that we disagree on and let's use facts to argue those as well. But let's start with that. And then let's also understand that there are different groups out there that exist and different things that people are interested in. And so we're not necessarily leaving anything off the table. We're always like eyes wide open seeing what's out there and knowing that a community could be 1,000 people. that kind of galvanize around one thing.

At the same time, you know, there are different ways to play the quote-unquote game and knowing that, you know, everything has consequences and everything you do will have repercussions. And so you have to think about that long term at the same time. I think in media, this happens all the time,

politics, like every organization, in every industry, this is not something new. You know that if you decide to do something, you are going to have consequences. Are you ready to handle those consequences right now? And they might happen today, they might happen in a year, they might happen in 10 years.

They might never happen. But if you think through all the different scenarios here, you have to then decide as an organization that, like, is that what I want to go down? And if not, then you're not going to do it. but I think these are things that are often lost is that yeah there's a lot of questions like well why don't we do things well it's because you're not thinking about what's going to happen if you do

what have the wins been like because you I know that you expanded into Halifax and that to the mainstream public that's a huge win that's a huge accomplishment but when you're at least for myself when I succeed at something I'm already five steps ahead of the next place that I need to get to. So it's hard when people are like, oh, you should be so, like, when I graduated law school, I was already so beyond being in law school, I was already on to, well, I'm not going to just be unemployed and hang out and think that I'm some big successful person because I need

to figure out what I'm going to do with my life. And so it's hard to slow down and celebrate the wins, at least for myself. And I think that I imagine when you're taking on like a new organization like in Halifah that's a huge win but at the same time now there's even more responsibility now there's even more people that you're helping support and make sure that they're able to deliver and be a part of their community and so it seems like there would be a balancing act what are the wins like to try and celebrate i think like in some cases it's it's acknowledging and understanding that you know and asking the question like who is it a win to um is it a win to us and as an organization

to an extent, sure. Who does the coast in Halifax? The win is when we're seeing the impact in the community and when people are shining spot, shining praise and that kind of thing, that's the win. And so, you know, it's as an organization, this is where we,

where we're not even struggled, but we're not focused on. And we have these different conversations when people say, like, oh, I've never heard of your company, or I don't know, I don't know any of these publications. And I asked the question, like, are you in any of these communities? They're like, no. And I say, then I don't care if you know us or not. It doesn't matter. It is completely irrelevant.

You are not a member of any of these communities. Therefore, you should not have heard of us. And so that's one mindset that we take. I think, I think to your point, celebrating wins is really challenging for me personally. Um, like you, I'm, I'm always thinking of many steps down the road. And so there was one big moment in my career. I remember a number of years ago I'd interviewed, uh, prime minister Trudeau at a big business conference in front of thousands of people. And it was, it was great. Uh, I think it was like half an hour after that. My mom called me and she was over the moon ecstatic and I was back in the office. And, uh, I

think my response to her was like, oh, like, thanks. Okay, like, I got to go now. I need to go back to work and she got mad at me. Like, why are you not, why are you not celebrating this? Why are you not appreciative and all that? And I said, I am, but I, like, now when it's over and I have other things to do. And so that was a big, I think, learning moment for me that we have to celebrate these things. Whether small or big, we have to, and it's not just celebrating for you, but it's celebrating for the people around you and your teams. And so we have to, yeah, we have to think about those sort of things. And we need to take time and pause.

I think I think the past couple of years have done that. You know, like, you know, what, especially during the early days of COVID, like, to me, what was a, what was a big win? It was leaving, leaving my condo and going for a walk. That was a big win. And so I think it's just given some, just open the eyes a little bit that like yeah let's let's take time a little bit you know let's let's celebrate each other let's celebrate what we're doing um personally and professionally

uh having a kid has also opened my eyes to that and seen that you know hey you learned a new word that that's a big win in my eyes uh so yeah it's just putting everything into context and um yeah just making you realize that yeah you need to take time. Yeah, I'm interested to know how that what that's been like with your family because committing to the podcast, the challenge with it was knowing that I was going to be apart from my partner and that we're not going to have like a regular schedule anymore because it's a few hours of doing preparation for figuring out who the guest's going to be, writing questions, interviewing, then doing the editing and trying to get it out on social media

and doing all of those things. So it was a big time commitment. And so I had to entrust that she was willing to support that and believe in the vision and accomplishments like having yourself on you you might not see it as a big deal for me it was a huge deal because I think that the impact that you're having on our communities across Canada is I believe going to be vast and I imagine that there are various community champions of the various news organizations in each community but what has that been like with your family to commit to this to pitch this to them and say hey I would like to do this but this is going to be long days, long nights, hard work, stress, but the result for other people, besides myself,

hopefully is going to be positive because that sales pitch is honest, it's true, but it's also difficult to imagine that you're going to take on this role for the benefit of other people and have to sacrifice being around your child, being around your partner when maybe that's all you want to do all day and the desire to rush into work is not at the forefront every day. Yeah. Well, I have a very supportive wife, and my parents and my family and small group of friends I think are very understanding and very supportive and open and, you know, always there to help when needed and sometimes lend a near, sometimes let me vent and sometimes, you know, be a punching bag, which is not a good thing. But always, always being there and being open and just sharing your goals.

And so for me, like, this has been the case in my life, like, ever since I was younger, it was always like, well, we need to be better. Me personally, we as a group, as society, and all these, like, we need to be better. And that's always been a common theme in my life. I think with this new endeavor, it's definitely been challenging, starting a new company, especially with a new family, very, very challenging, more than I thought. I definitely forgot how hard it was,

not to just start something, but then you throw a kid into the mix and it is bloody difficult. But having that support, you realize, and I'm not the best, I'm not the best husband. I'm not the best father in that way. I'm not the best son and brother and friends sometimes.

But you realize that, that time is the most important thing that you have. In fact, time is the only thing that you have. Everything else is completely irrelevant. And when you realize that time is the one thing, you know, you don't want to live life with regrets. And I have, unfortunately, many of them at this point, which is not a good thing.

And so every day that I live, I'm always thinking, like, how can I leave it all on the table? And how can I not have any. regrets tomorrow it's a it's a difficult thing it's challenging and you're trying to figure what do you sacrifice at the end of the day that's all it comes down to what are you willing to sacrifice you know you're doing it as well you're sacrificing your time with your partner I'm doing it right now being here even there's like okay I'm sacrificing time with my family and and these are the sort of things that you just think about is at the end

of the day what are you willing to sacrifice what is important to you and what's not important to you. I've lost a lot of friends along the way because I just haven't had the time for them and the ones who've stuck with me are the ones who I care about the most. You have to be understanding and conscious of that and sometimes you need to realize that you're a bit of a jerk and you need to, you know, just turn some things off sometimes. And so now, you know, I live my day, I live my life and I live most days in a very specific way in that I don't want to be miserable. I want to be happy. If something doesn't bring me joy and happiness, I'm going to think about why I'm doing it. And more often than not, I'm going to stop doing it.

And so you just have to be conscious of all these things. You have to be willing to sacrifice. And that's the biggest thing at the end of the day. I couldn't agree more. And I think to the punching bag point, I felt that as well, where I'm trying to work one job, do part time with another job, volunteer on a board, be involved in the community, do the podcast. Now I'm an indigenous ambassador with indigenous tourism, B.C. And so I'm wearing so many hats that by 9 p.m., I'm not a great person to be around because I'm so exhausted. And when I do miscommunicate, I'm so blessed to be with a partner who's like, I'm not going

to push back or poke or have a response to the stupid thing you just said. I'm just going to give you a second to recalibrate, and that is one of my struggles that I think I'm getting better at, but I'm lucky that there isn't someone who wants to play the game with me of like, I say something stupid, then you say something. Like, her not willing to participate in that, I think saves us a lot of disagreements and a lot of things where I would be sitting at the end of the night being like, I just shouldn't have said that to begin with, and I was wrong to begin with. And I think that that's the hard part too, because it's, I'm doing all of this for us,

my partner's benefit, for my benefit, for our family's benefit, and then to misspeak to the person who's being the most understanding, who's supporting the most, who's giving up our time together the most, that she gets my stupid comment or my wrong response is probably the hardest part because it's the person in my opinion that deserves it the least. And of course, the grocery store clerk or whoever doesn't deserve it either, but the person who's on your team, who's picking up your slack and handling things so well when you're not is like that's the worst. Like that's the worst

apology to have to give because it's like, ah, it's just like you didn't deserve any of that. And in fact, you deserve the very opposite. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're hitting the nail on the head. Well, I'm interested to know where you hope to take this long term because you're saying you look

in 50 years into the future. Where would you like to see these organizations go and what are your hopes in terms of the panels and events like that yeah i mean i want us to um i want us to be in more communities uh across canada and even outside of canada i think there's these opportunities and potential i think there's the need for it the more we do this the more i realize that that every community needs this and if it doesn't have it then we need to look and see if we can support um i i know you talk to tyler about this

uh but the impact that that the current and the team there has in the Fraser Valley when the flooding happened last year was like more than gigantic that was life-changing and that was a big wake-up call to us that said we have to do this in more places and this has to work because when you see comments coming in when people saying like you literally saved my family and my life and we were prepared because of you that's better than anything else that tells you everything so we want to see if we can if we can do this in more places and get on the ground in more markets into more communities you know small towns bigger cities the motivation for me is definitely around like getting to that point and seeing if we can do

this over the next five years are we going to be able to get to the next 20 or 30 I fundamentally want to change the way that this industry works as a as a journalist you'd You generally say the same sort of things, which is you are, you're overworked, you're underpaid, you're underappreciated, you're just like hog in the wheel, nobody cares about you, and you're not paid well. And so you don't see a long-term future in the industry. So hearing all these sorts of things, you realize, like, that's crazy when you think back in time and having worked at one of the largest newspaper companies and the,

the country, for a very short time, you see that people have made careers there. They've been there for like 30, 40, 50 years. And when you hear now these younger reporters saying, I don't know if I'm going to be in this industry for a long time, that's very concerning. Because it makes you think, then, like, where are people going to get information from? Who is going to be the ones that are telling those stories? Who, you know, one of the things that time gives you is, you know, institutional knowledge and when you don't have enough time in the industry you don't have that and when you have people that are retiring and leaving and these sorts of things they're leaving with all of that knowledge and if they're not going to pass it down to anyone and if there's this

constant turnover then we as society are going to face some very very big problems so so for us it becomes and for me it becomes as like long-term thinking of okay well could we you know could we build a company that's going to be around for the next, you know, 100 years. I look at post media. I think they've been around for like 100, 120 years or something. Why couldn't we build a company that's going to be around for the next 100 years? You know, and so it's really just, just questioning these sorts of things and thinking about them. And, you know, when people, people say, think about the next five years, it's like, I do. I think about the next five years, because if we don't get to five years, we're not going to, we're not going to get to 20. So everything

we're doing is with that in mind and thinking thinking about that. I think that if we do it right and if we focus on creating these communities like for the community by the community, I think it will have huge positive impact. I think we can become voices and leaders and we can become at certain points like different publications of record. That when you're in a community and this is your home or this is the place you work or whatever, this is the place you think about. This is the place you want to tell your story. This is the place that you get your information. This is the place you trust at the end of the day.

That will tell you right from wrong. They will tell you what's happening. They will also be there if you want to pick up the phone and have a conversation or send a text message or send an email. And like, you're going to get a response from a real person in that community. It's not going to be someone that's trying to brush you off. It's someone that says, I care about what you think. I care about who you are. I care about what you do.

Let's have a conversation. And let's try to make this better for all of us together. Yeah, that's the huge danger that I think the United States is facing because they don't agree on what the news is anymore. They don't agree on basic facts. It's whether or not you read this or you read that, that whether or not you believe something is true or not. And that terrifies. That freaks me out because, and you see it bit by bit within our own culture. I think particularly, you've seen it with like the trucker convoy. People just don't agree on like what the heck happened and that like no matter where you land on it it freaks me out to think that like

we don't even believe each other anymore and so to have something like the fraser valley current where it's like here are the facts here's some information i know they didn't do an article on that but having somewhere where we both agree this is where we get our news from for most things we're going to disagree politically on certain issues but this is like this is an upcoming event and this is happening on planet earth and like having just basic things where we we have a trusted source of news, I think, is crucial. Can I ask just your thoughts on Bill C-18? What is going on there and what is a bit of your perspective?

Yeah. So Bill C-18, I mean, I could talk about this for a long time. I think it will fundamentally change the news industry. It is the government trying to support and save local journalism to an extent. I think I think the problem is that they're getting they've gotten too involved and they're trying to get big tech companies to pay, pay news organizations. Some of the problems that exist, though, are that there's no transparency in a bill like that. And so what we're trying to do, and we've got a coalition of over 100 different publishers from around Canada, who have come together to say, you know, know, big tech company giving money to big publishers is going to kill the industry.

We need to level a playing field. We need to have, we need to have apples to apples comparisons. If you're going to go and say big tech companies have to fund and give money to publishers, then there needs to be some sort of criteria that's involved that can, that levels of playing field and everyone can have a part in. So for us, when we look at it and we say, you know, if one of our publications is doing the same thing and creating local reporting and local news, just like another one of their competitors, and because of this bill, the competitors getting funding up to us in an undisclosed amount, and we are not, we have a problem with that. we are trying to we're trying to be not just innovative but we're trying to be sustainable everything that we do is not motivated by money we're motivated by impact we do need to make a profit and offer this to work so that we can continue reinvesting into more markets and

more people and paying people better and so when we are already like at a loss and we are already being treated as we are not equal I think that's the biggest problem so the conversation used to be about big tech versus publishers. Now it becomes big publishers versus small publishers. And we need to have some sort of even field here so that we can think about the long-term effect that's going to have on the industry. Yeah. In your conversation with Michael Geist, who I again recommend people go and listen to that

full interview because I thought it was brilliant. You talked about how one of the challenges is the non-disclosure. agreements around getting this funding. And the idea that the organizations that need to be saved are the ones that are saying they're on their last legs and that they're about to fail. And if they don't get the funding, they'll go out of business. And the irony to that is that you're growing and thriving and you're going to use the money to grow and thrive and have bigger impacts. Why would we invest in the organizations that are saying, if we don't get this money, we're going to fail? That seems against a capitalistic notice.

Yeah, well, I'll say that, you know, no one in government ever wants to see any companies or any industries fail on their watch. And so you're going to do whatever you have to in order to make sure that doesn't happen. And if some of the biggest companies in an industry are telling you that they're going to have to shut down operations in certain places, you don't want that to happen. that's going to be a big stain on your on your tenure in office so these are some of the problems that exist um bill c18 is one that's being modeled in part after what happened down in australia where the big um big publisher went to government to lobbied them and said we you know we want facebook to be giving us money and uh we want to pick and choose kind of who gets that money and how much they get and we're not going to tell anyone who's

you know how much anyone's getting and you know we're talking about and here in Canada I think they're doing a bit of a better job than that but they've definitely forgotten that small and medium publishers are the lifeline to communities all around the country and that we need to make sure that we are we're we're playing on a level playing field but we're also incentivizing to grow we're incentivizing to invest in people not just to cover costs of you know, and pay back hedge funds and pay down big debts. So these are some of the problems that exist. I think what we as a coalition have been able to do over the past month has been great.

I'm hoping that when the House sits again in the fall, we'll, in the committee starts hearing from witnesses. I'm hoping that we'll be able to have a good, strong voice and that the different members are open and understanding that if they make the wrong calls, this will fundamentally change the industry and how things work. How would it change that for people who don't understand that? So put it this way. If we were in market A and then we've been around and we've hired, let's say, five

journalists and if company B, the incumbent, the establishment, been around for a long time, public company or owned a, and controlled by a hedge fund with amounts of crazy amounts of debt if we as a newer company and we all do the same things essentially we all we all have journalists in in a community

if if we are not on the same field if we're not if there's no criteria that is transparent if there is no funding formula if there's no transparency into the deals that are being made that established company could be getting millions upon millions of dollars whereas new company startup a

doing cool innovative things that are having an impact you're basically just like handing handing someone money and saying here you go pay off whatever you need to it doesn't really matter to us so in that way you're you are it is unfair competition in that way you're you're especially when it comes to this industry where you know people are it all comes down to people it all comes down to unfortunately how much money you have and how much money you're making and and how much things are costing you and so when you're to an extent like when your competition is is getting funding and you're not they have money and they're getting money to do whatever they need to which means that they can hire your people that they can go and they can be spending on

advertising or whatnot, um, they can do whatever they need to do. So all we're trying to say is just, just have it simple and even and somehow transparent and fair. That's it. That makes sense. You've sat down with the prime minister who's sort of helping bring about this bill. Obviously he's not leading the charge, um, but he would obviously be involved. Um, Jody Wilson Raywald made another post after the Halifax examiner basically saying like, this is what's to be expected of this prime minister, I lost faith in him. I'm just interested, do you think that a decision like this comes from malevolence or ignorance or naive optimism? Like, do you think that this is accidental, that it's non-disclosure agreements, that it's not transparent? This was what we

were sort of promised when he ran was that we were going to have more transparency, clarity. I'm just interested, do you think that this is just, like, if you got in a room with the team that they'd, oh, you're right. We're totally, we didn't see it that way and now we understand, or do you think that there's like a deeper problem here? Yeah. I think prior to any conversations that we were having, they just, you know, members from Heritage, just we're not talking to the right people and not knowing what's out there. And when you're being lobbied by the biggest organizations in the country, you think that's the way to go. but then all of a sudden a hundred plus publishers come and say hey guys there's a problem here and we don't agree with this

they've been very open uh we've had numbers of members of parliament who've been we've been chatting with and and i and i think there is a lot of openness and to and willingness to to listen and and hear that you know what's actually happening and uh just you know hear the other side of it type of thing and say okay if we're going to do something this has to be done right i think that message has been delivered i think it's been heard loud and clear i'm i'm hoping that that that all levels of or all the different party members and MPs will will be understanding of that and so like you know i mean the beauty is that that you've got a government and a minister that's put forward this bill that says we want to help journalism. That on its own is something fantastic. Now it becomes,

okay, like, how does that actually get executed? So, you know, it starts with that mindset, like, okay, this is, this is actually a good thing. You want to help. You want to make this better. I think when, I think when the government brought in the qualified Canadian journalism organization designation a number of years ago, that was another big step in that direction. So we are qualified, which means that we get access to a labor tax credit that gives us 25% of up to a certain amount of our journalist salaries back, which is phenomenal. And there is a lot of funding that's been put in place up until, I believe, 2025. And it's incentivizing to hire more journalists. That's ultimately what it's doing.

You get 25% up to, I think it's $55,000 salary. and you get that back. And it's all transparent. And anyone can go and see this sort of information online. And so that as an introduction is phenomenal. You know, now it's like, okay, some next steps there. So it is, if anything, it's like, it should be seen with optimism. Like, you've got a government that actually wants to make a difference here

and wants to incentivize and wants to help the industry. The only problem that in C-18 specifically is that, you want to help the industry, then talk to the industry. Don't just talk to, you know, the ones at the top that are, that have been around for a long time, that are saying that they're going to shut down. That makes sense. Can you tell people, even including myself, how can we support what you're doing? What does that look like?

I know that there's going to be people who tell their friends and say, hey, have you heard of this news? But how can we make sure that this is a success? Because I just don't see any flaws in the value that this is going to. going to bring the community. So what can we do to support and make sure that this is a long-term success that reaches all across the country? Yeah. I mean, one thing that we are looking for, you know, we're always looking for more opportunities and we're looking to find more problems to solve. We're looking for different communities to kind of like speak up and say, hey, we need help and hey, we want support, and, you know, we need something like this.

We started with, I honestly can't remember which one was first. I think it was Fraser Valley, and then we did Burnaby. And when we did those, it started with this idea that, okay, like we can actually make a difference. And you've got people like Tyler and now Grace and Jothi in the Fraser Valley, and we've got a number in Burnaby. But what that sparked was more conversation from surrounding municipalities, and surrounding communities. And so then we've had different people that were in New West,

and they said, hey, we see what you're doing in Burnaby. We really like this. How can you do this in New West? And just, I think, a month or so ago, we launched in New West. And we hired a journalist out there, phenomenal, Ria Renouf. And she is having already such a deep impact in the community. So in large part, what we need is there's more people to tell us where to come next and what to do next and say,

we see what you're doing, we want this too. And we want to, and we're willing to help. We're willing to be a community ambassador and we're willing to share the news and that sort of thing. I've always believed that we are stronger together and the only way that this works is if it's done together. Absolutely. Farhan, this has been an absolute pleasure to hear your journey and your passion for community. That's why I started this podcast is because I wanted to hear from individuals like yourself who, have a vision and want to play it out and want to improve and improve the social fabric that we live in. And I think that that's exactly what you're doing. It's what I've experienced with

the Fraser Valley Current and following other the Burnaby Beacon and the reporters that you have working hard to create a sense of community and to help inform us in a healthy way that isn't overwhelming us with negativity, that's giving us a healthy dose of community, a balance between the challenges we're facing and where we're succeeding and really inspiring people to be informed in a better way. And so it's been such a pleasure to be able to sit down with you and a really surreal experience for me. So thank you. No, thanks. And I love what you're doing with the podcast. I'm really excited to see where it's going to keep going. And you were saying you went from doing this monthly and now weekly and

keep doing it. I think the hardest thing, especially in the world of content, is being consistent. and you've committed to it. It's going to be hard. It's going to be a bumpy road. You're going to want to quit. You're going to want to take a week off here and there. But just keep doing it. Keep fighting it.

And, yeah, you will one day get to where you want to be. Well, I will give you the same advice. And I just have to say, I wish your family the best because I think that I can't imagine the stress and the responsibility that you carry. So I admire you and your family for all the work you're doing for our communities. Thanks. Thank you.