Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Patrick Hogan. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Patrick, appreciate you joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

I have a couple small businesses which I own, most notably Ethical Gems, which sells diamond engagement rings to customers throughout Australia and sometimes internationally, and I’m the Co-Creator (with Olivia Scott) of Back of House Productions, which produced Back of House earlier in 2023 and is now being pitched in the US as a TV Series. Although both totally different industries, they both originated in the same way. For Ethical Gems I found myself in the middle of COVID-19 and my main income was bartending, which was greatly affected by lockdowns. Because of this and before I could receive job-keeper, I had to come up with an idea to make more money. I had worked with diamonds when I was in my teens and learnt about buying and selling them, so decided to pick it up again and study at GIA online. From there, Ethical Gems started to gain traction and I built up a client base. For Back of House Productions, it was very similar. Olivia & I were driving home from acting class one day and had heard about potential film strikes, and also noticed the industry slowing down. After talking about our experiences growing up in the hospitality industry with families running venues, we decided that we wouldn’t sit around and would create work for ourselves! It’s now on Kold Open in the US and being pitched to Producers and Streaming Services, so it’s all very exciting.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a Business Graduate from QUT who spent most of my young life working in hospitality in the family business, Jade Buddha, but got into the diamond industry when I was 17. My Uncle was a diamond trader in Melbourne and wanted to purchase stock in Brisbane. I had just gotten my license and thought helping out might be a great way to make money, so I offered to drive out to places and meet people looking to sell their second-hand diamond jewellery. After doing that for a while on the side and being forced to develop a more prominent income stream when I was out of work during COVID-19, I switched my focus to developing my current business, Ethical Gems, which focusses on creating bespoke pieces for clients, and ethically sourcing all of our diamonds, both Natural & Lab-Grown. For me, I think what sets Ethical Gems apart from the rest is we ask our clients what their budget is, and then we take all the hard work & risk out of buying. We source the best possible diamond & setting our client wants for the dream price, and always deliver. We’re a service as much of a product, and we’ve helped a lot of young individuals in particular who can find the process of buying the perfect engagement ring very daunting.

As for Back of House, I’m a Credited Actor in the Disney+ Series ‘Nautilus’, I’ve trained at the Margie Haber Studio in Hollywood and and I’ve always been super keen to combine my business background with my passion for film. By Creating our our Pilot, Olivia and I were able to learn more about what goes into film, create work for ourselves and people in the industry who were affected by the film strikes and ultimately create something that might be Australia’s next big thing! We even funded the project ourselves with our combined savings, which made it SUPER important to get it right… I think we’ll be able to pull it off, time will tell though.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I’m the sole owner of Ethical Gems, however I can tell you how Olivia and I met and ultimately created Back of House Productions.

She’s a very talented actor also, and we were participating in the same Sunday Night class at Tom McSweeney’s ‘The Warehouse Workshop’, After chatting after the second or third class in the course, we realised that we only lived about 10 mins away from each other in Brisbane and had a lot of mutual friends, so we decided to car pool for the remainder of the term. One evening driving home we realised both of our families owned very popular hospitality venues in Brisbane and we started telling each other about crazy stories we’d experienced. One of us joked about it being a great idea for a TV series, then we just looked at each other… The next night we caught up again after work and started developing the series, and here we are now!

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Absolutely, no matter what the business venture is, in my case owning Ethical Gems or creating a pilot like Back of House, the key aspects of managing a team are the same. The first point I would say is make sure the team has a clear goal that its working towards. Everyone needs to be on the same page and have direction, otherwise its incredibly hard to work together, and if you’re at the head of a team, you need to establish that direction and goal early on. I’d also say it’s very important to stay positive and not complain. If you’re managing a team, you can’t be negative or this will trickle down and ruin the moral & enthusiasm on a project. A good trick my father always told me is to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. That way if everything that could go wrong, does go wrong, you’re prepared for it and can stay positive, and if it all goes great, even better!

Contact Info:

• Website: Ethical Gems – https://ethicalgems.com.au/ Back of House Productions – https://backofhouseproductions.com.au/
• Instagram: ethical.gems & backofhouse_productions
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsgpXO2NkGM&t=317s