Career summary

When Talia Datt graduated from Monash University with a Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Global Studies, she had already been running her own business, the Social CliQ, for 12 months. Talia’s strong work ethic and passion for creating change stem from the skills learned in her double degree, experiences studying abroad and a supportive family network. Now Talia’s digital marketing and social media company has expanded to a team of six, working to improve the online presence of a range of different clients.

Career pathway

January 2020 – present: Marketing Director and Co-founder, Tapt By Hatch
April 2018 – present: Director and Founder, The Social CliQ
2016: Global Scholar, Monash University
2015-2019: Bachelor of Commerce/Bachelor of Global Studies, Marketing and International Relations, Monash University

What inspired you to launch your own business, the Social CliQ?

I studied a semester abroad in Sweden and when I returned, I started my first business within two months. After the new experiences and independence I had while on exchange, I found it hard to adjust back into the life I was living previously. Studying in Sweden really broadened my perspective to different cultures, environments and societies and so I decided to look into new opportunities. I started talking with different people about their careers and industries, and some small business owners told me they needed help with social media. My father is a mentor to me, and he encouraged me, saying “whatever you want to do, it doesn’t matter if you fail – just try.” That gave me the push I needed! I really liked the idea of social media marketing from a creative perspective and from a community engagement perspective. I mocked up a logo, a basic one-page website, got a business card and started door knocking on businesses offering my service. I offered them for free initially to build my reputation and relationships with clients. It started really small with just myself. If you had have told me that two years later, I would have a team of six and be working on huge brand names, I would have never believed it!

How did your degree in Global Studies complement your degree in Commerce?

If my Commerce degree was the brains, my Arts degree was the heart. My Commerce degree gave me a lot of technical skills around data input and analysis, strategy development and financial management. My Arts degree taught me interpersonal skills, how to communicate and build relationships and deal with different situations.

What skills did you gain from your Global Studies degree that you have used to grow your business?

For me, maintaining relationships is invaluable. I have great relationships with my clients and by maintaining these relationships, the business grew by word of mouth. We will always go above and beyond to help our clients.

I also focus on maintaining good relationships with my staff. Having to work collaboratively with others in group assignments gave me the leadership skills to work with and manage my team of staff.

Now you’re also working on another project – Tapt by Hatch. What is Tapt By Hatch about?

Taot By Hatch was my brother’s idea – he’s a student at Monash University studying a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Finance. At The Social CliQ, most of our clients are in the fast-moving consumer goods industry. We build a brand and use advertising campaigns to sell products. My brother and I combined our skills in marketing and finance to launch a platform called Tapt By Hatch. The initial product we’re working on is called Tapt, and it’s a digital business card that allows you to tap your card on someone’s phone and automatically save your contact details to their phone. There are several benefits of this, including that you can run targeted advertising campaigns to the phones that you touch.

The notion of the traditional business card is becoming outdated. For my business, I would print 500 business cards a year at a cost of $1-$1.50 per card, and you don’t know where those business cards go. They could just be thrown in a bag, thrown in a drawer, thrown in the bin. With Tapt, you know that every time you tap a phone your contact details are being saved. From an environmental perspective, this reduces the amount of waste in the world.

How do you come up with these new and innovative business ideas?

I use critical thinking to determine what value I can add to the environment around me and to people’s lives. I could see that small businesses required assistance in social media marketing, but the bigger agencies that were established weren’t prepared to help. Just from having conversations with small business owners, I could see that the market was lacking an agency that can help small businesses succeed on digital platforms.

Also, I’ve surrounded myself with people who are likeminded. My friends at University and I were always brainstorming ideas, thinking of different things that we could implement or create.

Social media is a rapidly changing industry. What advice do you have to students to adapt to change?

With change lies opportunity. During the COVID-19 pandemic we have seen opportunities in areas that we didn’t know existed beforehand. As a business owner, we had to adapt to the impacts of COVID on some of our clients. For example, our clients who own cafes have had to close their businesses. They don’t need the same marketing activities anymore, but now lies a whole new world of local delivery and creating online platforms to sell products far beyond just a café scope.

During this time people have a lot more downtime. If you’re looking to put those energies towards a new project or new idea – I don’t think you have anything to lose, there’s only experience to gain.