Dynamic Duos: Jack Nimble’s Adam Wise and Angus Mullane
In this week's Dynamic Duos, Jack Nimble co-founders Adam Wise and Angus Mullane give a run down on their eight years of friendship, which has so far seen them launch, build and sell a successful social-first content agency.
Adam Wise:
Angus and I met at One Green Bean. I’d been there for about four years at the time and was working as a content manager. Angus was hired as a senior content manager, which kind of annoyed me to be honest! Why didn’t they just promote me? Anyway, I’m not bitter at all.
Angus and I quickly formed a creative partnership, and I quickly became a senior content manager. Over the course of a year, I reckon we created thousands of pieces of social content together. We both had backgrounds in film and art, so we were used to getting our hands dirty. We’d come up with ideas, produce them, direct them, shoot them, star in them, edit them, publish them, you name it. We became known as these hybrids that could do end-to-end, social-first, fast-craft content.
This formed the basis of what eventually became Jack Nimble. On one of the many shoots we were on, we realised there was a gap in the market to create an agency that specialised in exactly what we were doing – social-first creative and production. And because we could get our hands dirty and do both, we could bootstrap the business ourselves.
Angus left OGB first to pursue the idea as a freelancer and test the waters. I used him as a guinea pig, I’m not going to lie! Although, I did want to stay behind to continue learning from my manager and ECD, Pia Chaudhuri. She’s the best boss I’ve ever had, and as an ECD myself now, I model a lot of my behaviours on what I learned from her. But this isn’t about Adam and Pia…
After about four months apart, I left to pursue starting the business with Angus. He’d done enough as a guinea pig to warrant me taking the leap! He’d managed to snag Coates Hire as a client. We freelanced together for a bit, whilst we cooked up what our business would be called. During that time, I managed to snag Westfield as a client. And so on 1 July 2017, we started Jack Nimble with Coates Hire and Westfield as our founding clients.
Angus is an incredible creative partner and business partner. I truly consider myself very lucky to have met him. He’s brave, he’s got the most incredible work ethic, and he pushes me to be better every day. He’s always challenging ideas (in a good way) and pushing us into thinking about what’s next for Jack Nimble. That’s something that’s really rubbed off on me over the years and it really inspires me.
Angus Mullane:
I first met Adam *checks LinkedIn resume* in 2015 at One Green Bean. Adam had been there for four years and I was the new kid on the block. We eventually became creative partners as Adam had a background in photography and myself in video – both with a love for ideation. We led all the concepting and content production for all social content, we were like a mini-creative agency and production company within the agency walls. Everyday we would find innovative ways of using the platforms, write scripts or skits, rush out with our cameras to shoot, direct, edit, and publish. We started to feel there was so much more to explore with social and devised a plan to start our own thing. I left to explore the options to see if there was an appetite for it and we later teamed up to form Jack Nimble.
Five years later with massive client wins, industry awards, an acquisition, and now a team of 28 employees – we sometimes have to pinch ourselves. A large part of our successful partnership is built on an appreciation for each other and a genuine passion for making great content. We’re both fueled by the buzz of moving people. I think partnerships can be difficult to navigate because it’s so easy for people to slip into comparing each other’s input and value to a business, which starts to foster jealousy and resentment but when your beliefs, values and vision are in sync you really are only focused on what you can achieve together. People don’t believe it when we tell them, but we’ve never had 1 disagreement across the five years of our business – the only time we ever disagree is when we’re posting content on our Instagram, we’re both extremely protective over that – and challenging each other to maintain that high standard has led to some of our biggest new business opportunities
Adam is one of a kind and I’m lucky to call him my partner.
Adam on Angus:
Most memorable moment with Angus: Jack Nimble being acquired by Sparro in November 2021 was probably the most memorable moment. Sitting in the big meeting room at Sparro with the founders Morris and Cam (who are also a dynamic duo!), and Angus signing all those papers was pretty surreal. There were A LOT of papers. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d start a business, let alone a business that was successful enough to be acquired. But here we are. It was one of many proud moments we’ve had over the years.
Describe Angus in one word: Humble. For someone who’s achieved so much at such a young age, and has so much going for himself, it’s amazing how humble he is. I actually think that’s his best quality, too.
Angus’ most annoying or endearing behaviour: I can’t say the annoying habit because Angus would murder me, so I’m going to go with his most endearing behaviour. Angus pronounces a lot of words incorrectly. And rather than him being in the wrong, he likes to blame the English language as a whole. One example is we all called our Content Director, Genevieve, Gen for short. He was convinced it should be Gene, as in Gene Wilder.
Angus on Adam:
Most memorable moment with Adam: There’s so many good ones, but the most memorable ones are the most humbling experiences. I remember one of our first shoots together as Jack Nimble, it was probably a week in. We were on a massive set for a big brand, Adam and I were shooting social content and everything that could go wrong went wrong. Corrupt cards, tripods exploding under heat, awkward client greetings (yes, an ear lobe was kissed) and after we wrapped the 15 hour day we were incredibly exhausted and jumped in the car, and we both screamed at the top of our lungs together. We didn’t think Jack Nimble would last the night. But we had a good chuckle, a beer or two and got stuck in for the next shoot day.
Describe Adam in one word: Empathetic. He has this incredible natural ability to attract good people around him. I’ve never met someone so loved and respected and someone who cares so much about others.
Adam’s most annoying or endearing behaviour: Adam’s love for Whitney Houston and how much he loves to dance. I could watch him all day, it reminds me of my dad and brings me so much joy.
If you and a colleague would like to submit your story to Dynamic duos, please email kwelch@mumbrella.com.au.
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