How Jamil steered his career from advertising to business tech

RMIT alumni Jamil Luketic graduated with a love for media and quickly found a new job at Channel 9, but then a pathway into tech and entrepreneurship opened and he’s never looked back.

Jamil credits his career as both an entrepreneur and an employee to the skills and flexibility embedded in his learnings at RMIT. With a trained eye for new opportunities and skills that spread across more than one industry, he has been able to straddle roles at two different workplaces.

Creating a career from a wealth of diverse opportunities

Jamil studied a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) at RMIT, which enabled him to branch into new paths and pursue a career in media.

“I didn’t take the traditional route into marketing, but I always knew media and advertising was an area that I wanted to play,” he said.

“The best thing I got out of RMIT was that it exposed me to digital media and it prepared me for the various tools that are still being used in the marketing realm.”

Soon after graduating he landed a job at Channel 9, where he began building his sales, media and advertising experience. Later, he worked with various media agencies to support campaigns for some of Australia’s most well-known brands such as Target, Kmart and Coles, where he strategised the nation-wide rollout of the Little Shop range of collectibles.

Pivoting ahead of industry trends

When Jamil spied a new way of doing business, he turned his career in a totally new direction at Optus.

“I was quickly able to identify where the trends were going and I saw this surge in digital,” he said.

“What’s been apparent is that automation is key for improving processes and reducing costs. It also allows people to focus on other projects or do a bit more strategic thinking than they have in the past.

“With other organisations it’s been around personalisation, so they’re looking at various ways of doing A/B testing and that can be based on different customer segments or habits.”

After moving back to Melbourne from New South Wales, Jamil decided to take a year off to spend time with his young family. He returned to the workforce as a managing consultant for Mastercard, a role that gave him a close look at the payments space.

“I really got an inside view of how markets were behaving, which industries were booming and which ones weren’t,” he said.

“We found that the payment landscape is quite fragmented. Currently in the global market you’ve got buy now pay later, QR, cryptocurrency, one-click checkout, default payment gateways and payment processes.”

Jamil launched his own business, GrowPay, in July 2021 to address gaps in the payment market for merchants.

A world of difference between small and big businesses

Working four days a week at global cloud technology company, Oracle, and one day a week for his own payments start-up, GrowPay, Jamil has learned how both big and small businesses operate.

“Ultimately, when you work for a large enterprise such as Oracle, you have your safety net. You can afford to make mistakes, but you can learn from those mistakes and you’ve got the resources to help you when you need it,” he said.

“Working for yourself, you don’t really have that. Even though I’ve gained so much experience and knowledge along the way, unfortunately I don’t get the luxury of having resources. I have many hats to juggle and have to use my intuition on how best to move forward.”

Setbacks lead to hard-won success

So far, Jamil’s entrepreneurial journey has been a rollercoaster ride.

“During the pandemic last year, I ended up getting accepted into an accelerator program called Antler, a global VC-backed company that invests in what it sees as the defining companies of tomorrow,” Jamil said.

“It was a huge learning curve. I made it to the very end of the program, but I ended up not getting funding for GrowPay.

“Obviously, that can be demoralising and demotivating. It can put you in a bad place, but I saw it as an opportunity to learn from the feedback.”

Jamil said learning how to deal with disappointment and accepting critical feedback is a strength for entrepreneurs and employees alike.

“I think my biggest advice to any student is to network, because networking is key.

“Five out of six of my roles have been through networks. It’s really important that when you’re networking, you’re not just asking – you’re actually providing value back to whomever it is you’re in contact with.

“It’s also important to know, especially early on in your career when you graduate and you’re looking for your first role, that it’s ok to not get accepted because it will all work out.”

Story: Kate Jones

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