Meet Paddy Quay, a sports content creator who helps athletes, sporting organisations and brands tell their stories. If you've watched Scott Pendlebury's or Isaac Quaynor's YouTube channels, you've seen his work.
Paddy finished an Arts degree in 2019 and took a help desk job at Frogbox in early 2020, resetting passwords for community cricket clubs while COVID shut sport down. Nobody was posting the highlights from the streams, so he started clipping them into reels on top of the job he was hired to do. Frogbox's Instagram grew to around 10K followers, and running it became his role.
On the side, he cold messaged sports social media people on LinkedIn and started his own podcast, The Digital Rookie. A conversation at a careers night his mum made him go to introduced him to Tom Robertson at Collingwood. Paddy interviewed Tom on the podcast, and six months later Tom asked him to apply for a job.
When his Collingwood role ended, Paddy did it again. Through coffees, conversations and a part-time role at the Melbourne Mavericks, he built his own business. Since then he's filmed at the Winter Olympics in Italy, the Western States endurance race in the US and in the Azores with Beau Miles.
Lots to look out for in this episode, including why loving sport isn't enough to get hired in sport, the LinkedIn message that got replies from the Golden State Warriors, how he turned a help desk job into a social media role, and how he rebuilt his career after losing his dream job.
We cover:
(00:00) Intro
(02:18) Meet Paddy Quay
(04:45) Quick fire questions
(11:22) From help desk to running the Instagram
(17:25) Building trust with players at Collingwood
(23:15) Losing his dream job
(26:10) The free shoot that sparked his business
(42:40) Part-time at the Mavericks to his own studio
(48:20) From the Azores to the Winter Olympics
(54:20) Advice for aspiring content creators
If you liked this episode, give these a go next:
#354: How building Kanga TV led to a PR & Comms job in sport, with Marnie Cohen (TGI Sport)
#369: From warehouse to working with Olympians - Building a sports marketing career w/ Pat McGregor
#309: How I landed a dream job at Cricket Australia | Reuben Williams, founder of SportsGrad
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Thanks for listening, much love!
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