#140 Writing Life Out Loud: A Story Told in Real Time, with Lisa Messenger

Lisa Messenger writes her books in real time – almost like a journal. Sometimes the results aren’t pretty, but they’re real.

Messenger is an Australian entrepreneur, author, and the founder and CEO of Collective Hub, an international multimedia business and lifestyle platform.

She is also an international speaker, best-selling author, and an authority on disruption.

She writes books in real time, her latest being Risk & Resilience, the story of the tough lessons she’s learned during the last eighteen months of her entrepreneurial journey. Her story isn’t pretty, but it’s heartfelt and we learn about the cost and responsibility of a successful career where people rely on you to lead the way.

It’s a story about how to survive, thrive and prosper through pivotal times, and how taking time out to re-charge is paramount.

Today, we chat about what it takes to write out loud, to share the details of the hard times as well as the good, and what we can all learn from Lisa’s journey.

And why, sometimes, bigger isn’t necessarily better.

You can find out more about Lisa, her books, courses and Collective Hub here. (http://www.lisamessenger.com/)

 

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Mel: Welcome to another episode of writer on the road. Today's guest doesn't need an introduction because we all know and love her. Welcome, Lisa messenger.

Lisa: That is a beautiful introduction.

Mel: Lisa is an international speaker, best-selling author and an authority on disruption in both the Corporate sector and the startup scene.

Lisa: I love that word disruption. It's funny to say I'm an authority on disruption. I think when I was at school they may have worded it slightly differently. How it was that disruptive notion back then that saw me sitting in the hallways outside the classroom for the majority of my school life.

Lisa: But I'm still that same little punk rebel. Asking how to buck the status quo and always try to find a different better way of doing things.

Lisa: It's just that. Strangely enough that's kind of celebrated now hopefully a slightly more for nest and I get a girl a little bit spiritually and emotionally since the school days. But anyway it's an interesting space.

Mel: I'm the English teacher teaching the drop out student and the student's famous and I'm still there in the classroom.

Mel: This is a bit of a personal story for me but I do have the woman who has influenced my journey over the last I guess well over five years. The current book you have out there is Risk & Resilience and we're going to talk at length about that one today. But the book that started mine was Money & Mindfulness. It's been out a few years hasn't it?

Lisa: Yes, beautiful it gives me shivers when I hear that because I think there's so many people in this world that we all of us don't connect with or you know just silently doing something that is helping other people and then suddenly you have this connection and you hear about the impacts and that's very beautiful and I look forward to hearing your story.

Mel: Let's talk about money and mindfulness. We think we know all about it until we haven't got any. I found myself in a situation where I didn't have any I had two young children we were travelling in our caravan and everybody through Coffs Harbour and I went into the news agency and I found this amazing little what I thought was a paperback book in a news agency. I didn't have any money and I splurged out I think it was 30 bucks of my last hundred and bought this thing because it had pictures of the ocean. Lisa, that was such a practical book but full of joy and life because of the images, because of the topography and you've carried that through to your current books. It's more than just a How-To book isn't it?

Lisa: That is a beautiful thing. It's a big thing in being unafraid and courageous enough to invest in ourselves even...

Lisa Messenger writes her books in real time – almost like a journal. Sometimes the results aren’t pretty, but they’re real.

Messenger is an Australian entrepreneur, author, and the founder and CEO of Collective Hub, an international multimedia business and lifestyle platform.

She is also an international speaker, best-selling author, and an authority on disruption.

She writes books in real time, her latest being Risk & Resilience, the story of the tough lessons she’s learned during the last eighteen months of her entrepreneurial journey. Her story isn’t pretty, but it’s heartfelt and we learn about the cost and responsibility of a successful career where people rely on you to lead the way.

It’s a story about how to survive, thrive and prosper through pivotal times, and how taking time out to re-charge is paramount.

Today, we chat about what it takes to write out loud, to share the details of the hard times as well as the good, and what we can all learn from Lisa’s journey.

And why, sometimes, bigger isn’t necessarily better.

You can find out more about Lisa, her books, courses and Collective Hub here and here.

 

Read Full Transcript

Mel: Welcome to another episode of writer on the road. Today's guest doesn't need an introduction because we all know and love her. Welcome, Lisa messenger.

Lisa: That is a beautiful introduction.

Mel: Lisa is an international speaker, best-selling author and an authority on disruption in both the Corporate sector and the startup scene.

Lisa: I love that word disruption. It's funny to say I'm an authority on disruption. I think when I was at school they may have worded it slightly differently. How it was that disruptive notion back then that saw me sitting in the hallways outside the classroom for the majority of my school life.

Lisa: But I'm still that same little punk rebel. Asking how to buck the status quo and always try to find a different better way of doing things.

Lisa: It's just that. Strangely enough that's kind of celebrated now hopefully a slightly more for nest and I get a girl a little bit spiritually and emotionally since the school days. But anyway it's an interesting space.

Mel: I'm the English teacher teaching the drop out student and the student's famous and I'm still there in the classroom.

Mel: This is a bit of a personal story for me but I do have the woman who has influenced my journey over the last I guess well over five years. The current book you have out there is Risk & Resilience and we're going to talk at length about that one today. But the book that started mine was Money & Mindfulness. It's been out a few years hasn't it?

Lisa: Yes, beautiful it gives me shivers when I hear that because I think there's so many people in this world that we all of us don't connect with or you know just silently doing something that is helping other people and then suddenly you have this connection and you hear about the impacts and that's very beautiful and I look forward to hearing your story.

Mel: Let's talk about money and mindfulness. We think we know all about it until we haven't got any. I found myself in a situation where I didn't have any I had two young children we were travelling in our caravan and everybody through Coffs Harbour and I went into the news agency and I found this amazing little what I thought was a paperback book in a news agency. I didn't have any money and I splurged out I think it was 30 bucks of my last hundred and bought this thing because it had pictures of the ocean. Lisa, that was such a practical book but full of joy and life because of the images, because of the topography and you've carried that through to your current books. It's more than just a How-To book isn't it?

Lisa: That is a beautiful thing. It's a big thing in being unafraid and courageous enough to invest in ourselves even when things are you know I've been through that many times myself. I wrote that book because in March 2013 I started a print magazine and it was collective hub and it was 11 years into my entrepreneurial journey. So I kind of go well when something finally worked it was like an 11 year overnight success and that magazine within 18 months was in 37 countries like it was crazy but people kept saying to me but how are you doing this.

Lisa: You must have all this money and I said No I don't have no money.

Lisa: And so I really wanted to write my books in real time and win people to understand the journey that I'd been on the mind set and you know perceived or real barriers that I had to overcome and that there are no more currencies than cash. That was really important to me about how do we find like minded non-competing businesses and how do we kind of remove cash as the only currency and sort of thing. Well I love what you're doing and I love what you're doing what's the value exchange you know and how can we actually work together so leave it to the higher and the other premise of that book is that I think I used to feel that money was a dirty word for years and I kept myself kind of small and I felt guilty. You know the very thought of making money and I had to kind of shift my own mindset and go and worthy of this and so largely that was also about making money or making profit and doing good in the world don't have to be mutually exclusive and in fact what I've learnt is that we need to make money to have freedom and platform and choice.

Lisa: And so now I'm very comfortable with the notion of making money because unfortunately as much as we can trade other currencies and other things sometimes like print bills you know you have to pay with cold hard cash. So yeah the book was very practical and a lot of the mind set and the tools it kind of helps me on my journey to expand from literally you know zero dollars and three staff under the age of 25 entering into a highly saturated market that I knew nothing about that people said was dead or done things that I that's really a book about how I overcame all of that I guess and look it's a really cool story everybody and it's the one that I will remember for ever.

Mel: But then we move forward to the new book, Risk & Resilience and again it's this little 'live in the moment' experience true story that has reached out and touched the rest of us.

Lisa: The premise starting Collective Hub was to I was so sort of sick of the media at the time how you would read about these extraordinary people.

Lisa: But there was something lacking there. I was always asking what's the story behind the story. How did they start. Why did they start. How did they get funded. How did they find distribution. I was always perplexed and confused about this.

Lisa: So that's kind of the premise on which I started the magazine and then I thought whoa it's kind of my you see I felt to write books to actually tell my own story behind the story so people could you know relate in real time. So I've actually written six books in the last four and a half years. But yes the latest one risk and resilience is anything but pretty. And I started writing that in October 2016 when the collective hub started hitting the skids a little bit. So it was interesting going from three staff you know everyone on minimum wage suddenly had 32 staff and over three million dollars in fixed salaries. And it happened very very quickly and suddenly it as a creative and a visionary and a leader I found myself in this kind of horrible situation of systems and processes and I andH.R. and legal and finance and yark and I just was kind of drowning every day thinking well this isn't fun and I started questioning will is bigger better.

Collective Hub has given me the wildest journey of my life, like amazing in so many lessons but um but suddenly got quite ugly so I started writing this book October 2016 thinking it would have a very different ending and unfortunately as I got further into writing the book the business kind of went on this trajectory of you know it kind of got worse and worse before it got better.

Lisa: So I was like well I said I've tried it I put it out there and I think it's only through doing that and being authentic and raw and real and kind of going well. This is the reality of a high growth startup and an entrepreneurial journey which often isn't pretty. And I think it's given other people permission to kind of go Wow. You know your purpose and you can remain the same but if the delivery mechanism is actually drowning you as it was me then sometimes it's time to break a few things. So I did that and I've never felt so purposely fabulous.

Lisa: I built a business and found that it was actually to not what I wanted it took away. You mentioned that creative visionary in that creative journey and suddenly you're surrounded in paperwork and you're dying under it and you you have to pull back and that's what really intrigued me in your story.

Mel: You paid right back and got rid of it all. You knew before you could come out of the ashes phoenix like an end rebuild.

Lisa: Thank you. That was a very difficult time with some kind of brave and courageous just like passes and also you know surrounding myself with some people way smarter than me who I had to listen to and they literally like you know cut the guts out of the business the cost base is way too heavy. And so I just for the first time in my life just listened to these people were like on a daily basis and the guy that helped me Damien dig out of it he was meant to be with me for four days and he said I've never seen anyone just follow something to the T. So he stayed with me through the whole ugly journey of you know about 14 months or something he just stuck by my side and helps me wind out of it and the only way I can describe it is I just kept saying I just have to break everything like literally you know close the print magazine 52 issues in five years and you know make people redundant just cut the guts out of the cost base and get intimate with my data again and understand kind of where it had gone wrong and it did that really quickly and it was only a few months really after I broke everything and then I was like oh my gosh it's so obvious where you know these mistakes kind of happened and so now I'm building back up in a much more sustainable you know a much more sustainable way which will give longevity to my purpose so yeah I'm excited. I feel like I'm back in flow I have energy am again surrounded by fabulous people and you know I'm able to kind of breathe again as a creative.

Mel: It's exciting because I would actually call what you're doing now you're almost in Indie aren't you. You've moved out of the corporate you moved out of the traditional and now you're going Indie you're flying solo you're hiring freelancers and you're moving forward with purpose.

Lisa: My head of my advisory board is chatting to him a few days ago and I said you know it's so great to be out the other side of that big failure.

Lisa: And he said to me failure what do you make like that sort of failure. And I just thought oh yeah you know so many people.

Lisa: I mean I think it's great because you read about so many you know big global companies ABM Bay and pretty much everyone who's done anything big in the world has had you know some kind of big almost closure and then they've gone okay. Cut cut the guts out of it go back to basics now let's rebuild Phoenix like as you said and say hey it was like no this is the best thing you ever did. And and since then I have actually so many things have happened. I've had extraordinary other business women and men who have like Samantha wills. You know she's got the jury company she started in 2004. Jodie Fox she started her business. She's a prayer I think she got 30 million dollar investment or something last year. All these people have closed their businesses ready for the ultimate pivot and I think hopefully they have given permission to people to be unafraid to just go now. This is working you know I'm just going to close and work out what the next iteration is. And history will say that a lot of people now want to invest in whatever's next.

Mel: I guess you know how to not mess it up again.

Lisa: And I think that's really the best thing is messing it up. I think getting in this is an entrepreneur.

Mel: Lisa is an entrepreneur's entrepreneur. Are you getting in there doing it. Messing it up learning by your mistakes learning by your growth. I did see a few pictures of you with Richard Branson so I think I read a bit of fun in that.

Lisa: Do you know what the it was the first time.

Lisa: And still it's I mean gosh and yet Richard Branson I mean I spent time on his private island with him and then I ended up chairing the Virgin where conference with him so set on stage with him for three hours in 2016 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. You know I was the only person in Australia to have Jamie Oliver on my cover last year when he was at Yes I've spent a lot of time with them like you know Anna Wintour the doyenne of Vogue and you know Devil Wears Prada September Issue. She asked me to go meet with her in New York and I did that because collective had you know come on to her read. Yet John Cleese you name it I've had a pretty good.

But when you step into something so big you know it.

Lisa: It's not for the faint hearted you know but the beautiful thing is that because as you mentioned I've chosen to be an entrepreneur for entrepreneurs living my life out loud showing that anything's possible. I believe that you know going to that that space of nearly kind of going under was actually perfect for me because it's only having been there that I can now warn other people do that you know bigger isn't better use specialists not generalists like a decentralized workforce of freelancers and consultants is amazing because as we all know you can dip in and do power and bring them in project by project and there's so many things I've learnt.

Lisa: I'm very grateful I don't want to repeat the journey that I'm very grateful for this indie publishing world everybody we've got a fellow called Tim grow and he wrote I think we should have thirty thousand copies and now he's gone on he's put out a story. Well this is the real journey and it's really ugly and I didn't do this easily and even running the book was a trauma. We all see the shiny bits do we. We all see the shiny magazine but we don't see the work and the tears and clearly they would have been a few tears behind risk and resilience because the decision hurt. .

Lisa: You know as a leader and a visionary it's very difficult and it sounds like you've been through some of this and all go through a certain degree but you know fronting up to that office every day through that period and kind of saying okay you know let's change the world.

Lisa: And then come home and just falling in a heap you know crying. I should go and get the money to pay for everything. Yeah I mean that's the ironic thing in a way was that the magazine was still growing which was extraordinary and our digital footprint and our events were also still growing I mean we worked through that period often running up to four events a week and so it has a business very much you know growing and the community was loving it. The problem was I had way too many people on the way to higher salaries you know and way too many big costs involved with the business I just was never going to work in that iteration.

Lisa: Personally I'm assuming there is a there's a personal cost to losing your freedom. There's a personal cost to the responsibility of of of having to keep all those people employed. I mean I think I read somewhere that you knowing that you were working these people to the capacity and the stress involved in all that.

We don't know because I haven't but the systems and processes in place it meant a lot of what we were doing was grossly inefficient and I would have you know six direct reports and four of them would be coming to me saying hey we need to do this and was like the other person doing that and you know it so that was very interesting going from a very small team of three where you know everyone kind did everything and we all knew exactly what was going on and we were also passionate to suddenly I think it was almost like you know I would have an idea and then it would be filtered down through 3 eight people before it actually got implemented. So I think there was a lot at way too many people involved you know. And so in future what I would say and I'm saying to any creative is get really intimate with your data and have a great to see alongside of me who is all about or you know whatever that is that can be a freelancer just some great financial person who is kind of slicing and dicing data. I'm always surprised by creatives and how much they can like to see what I'm doing but I really know from charging right into her and I put something up on my Instagram. Yes I think the most likes I've ever say it was about being creative and charging appropriately so that's really important I think. Otherwise it's fun for a while but then we do burn out and we get resentful because we like it myself and everyone else is making all this money and having a great time.

Mel: That's one of the things that we indie writers and creatives come up against all the time is coming to terms with the fact that we can have a creative person at one stage of the day but at the other stage of the day we have to get on top of that. We have to know what's going on behind the scenes and it's just such an unfamiliar hand that you can make mistakes can't you. Before you learn the ropes but you started somewhere and look you in now.

Lisa: I wrote my first book in 2004 and was called Happinesses and I self published back then. I Just started to kind of learn about it and then so I've actually written a lot of books but no one read any and all that. I read like 24 books.

Lisa: I don't think anyone read the first 800 although I don't know what number mine was but the money went was fantastic.

Lisa: But I think the latest one everyone and there's been a couple of really good ones I think finding your purpose was one of them but that Risk & Resilience is really a key word nowadays we throw it around like anything because things go wrong and good people have bad things happen to them and you come out the other side of it.

Mel: Now I know you might have been at Bangalow which is northern NSW.

Lisa: Last January I just decided to move physically away from the office because I find when you're in office you know you can be busy but not necessarily productive and also suddenly things coming out you all the time we just react react react.

Lisa: I was like I physically have to remove myself from space to like think clearly and go What is the next move you know. It wasn't a decision that I made lightly and it took some time.

Lisa: I think that you know whether it's just moving to a different suburb or doing something counterintuitive to the norm and just removing yourself see you've got that time and space to actually think about what is the best use