Lisa Messenger on Resilience, Purpose and Building Your New Biz

It's Season Three - here we go, team.
And we're kicking off with Lisa Messenger - a well-loved entrepreneur, best-selling author and international speaker who is all about empowering us to unleash our full potential.
Lisa is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Collective Hub - which she launched in 2013 as a print mag in 37 countries. Lisa had no experience in the mag industry but almost overnight Collective Hub became a global sensation. It went nuts!
But it grew too big, too fast, and, as Lisa explains, she had to make the tough call to “break” the very thing she had started - and pivot her brand towards something far more sustainable and successful.
From her home in Texas, Lisa talks about life, resilience, how to find your purpose, why she gave up drinking, the best tips for starting your own business, and why public speaking used to be her greatest fear until she created her own unconventional way to zap those nerves.

BONUS:  Because we love you, we want you to enjoy a 20% discount when you purchase Lisa’s new "Start Up to Scale Up" book. Just use the code: stephhunt20
Plus, grab 10% off when you sign up to Lisa's Start Up Smart Masterclass. Pre-registrations are open now for the next round. Just use the code stephhunt20.

SHOW NOTES
Buy Lisa's Start Up to Scale Up book (discount code: stephhunt20)
Pre Register for Lisa's Start Up Smart masterclass (discount code: stephhunt20)
Lisa's Instagram - @lisamessenger
Collective Hub Instagram - @collectivehub 

We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast, the Darug people. We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. 

Transcript

STEPHANIE HUNT 0:08
Hi everyone, I'm Steph hunt Welcome to and we're rolling the podcast. I'm an international journalist, producer, news boss and mum. The thought of finding our voice speaking in public or on camera can be terrifying. I know the feeling. So join me as I chat with the world's best female presenters, foreign correspondents, leaders and performers to learn what scares them the most, their secret tips and tricks and how they find the grit to keep on going.
0:53
SH: Season Three, here we go. Team Welcome back. And kicking off with Lisa messenger, a well loved entrepreneur, best selling author, and international speaker who's all about empowering us to unleash our full potential. Lisa is also the founder and editor in chief of collective hub, which he launched back in 2013. As a print mag in 37. Countries Lisa had no experience in the mag industry, but almost overnight, collective hub became a global sensation. It went nuts. But it grew too big, too fast. And as Lisa explains, she had to make the tough call to break the very thing she had started and pivot her brand into something far more sustainable and successful. from her home in Texas. Lisa talks about life resilience, how to find your purpose, why she gave up drinking the best tips for starting your own business, and why public speaking used to be her greatest fear until she created her own unconventional way to zap those nerves. 

SH: Lisa messenger, thank you so much. I have all your books. I've got so many copies of your magazine all through the house. 

LISA MESSENGER: Ah, thank you, Steph. That's so beautiful. And you've got this beautiful smile beaming down the screen here. So I feel very at home already. 

SH: You are so at home. I want to say you are you're the original gangster in the world of being an entrepreneur. You were doing it back before anyone else was kind of doing it. 

2:36
LM: Yeah, this is my 21st year in business. I started when I was four. Yeah, I started my first business 22nd of October 2001. So yeah, I've been going a while and I was doing a bit of research. 

SH: So you you grew up in Coola. Yeah, I grew up in Gunnedah, not too far away.

2:53
LM: Okay, so you know what I'm talking about. So cooler, a little bit smaller than gun it I think the population was about 800. When I grew up there, we grew up on a, like a four and a half 1000 acre property out of town. So I rode a horse every day after school, made mud pies in the creek life was pretty simple and pretty wonderful. Love it. And then to boarding school. What was it like going to boarding school, someone who liked to sort of bucked the trend, make your own rules, boarding school can be a bit tough, if you want to, you know, be a bit different. Yeah, yeah. So, and interesting in terms of almost loss of identity back then, because what happened was, I spent the first couple of years of my life in Sydney, and then my parents got divorced. So then we moved to Coola with just my mom and my sister and I. And so then I was, like, totally identified with being a country girl, and like the Liberty shirts and the writing variants, I loved it all. And then when I was gonna go to boarding school, mom actually chose to move back to Sydney. And I'd always wanted to be like a boarder from the country, and I ended up boarding anyway, when we lived in Sydney. But um, you know, it was great, but looking back on it now. Yeah, definitely. I was bucking the trends. And I remember saying to my best friend, who is really funny, my best friends from school has lived in Texas for the last 20 years. So finally, I'm over here and we'll be able to catch up that we used to say to each other Oh, my gosh, when we leave school, this will all make sense. And we're still all these years later, scratch our head and go. Didn't really make a lot of

4:34
SH: I was gonna say how is how is Texas? You're in Austin, you've left Bondi for for Texas? 

LM: I'm in Austin, and Steph, it is the last place I thought I would be this year. But the house at Bangalow that we're renovating near Byron Bay, and we moved up there in August 2021. Because we just were like, okay, COVID and I've been wanting to renovate the house for years. So we're like let's move there renovate. And then

5:00
The plan was to live there this year. And that was all going well, until my partner Steven, an opportunity came up to expand his business into the US. And we've had a lot of kind of really positive indicators for collective hub out of the US like a lot of different sales. And we had a big Canadian store recently ordered for 176 of their stores a lot of our products. And so they've been all these signs. So when Steven said, I have to go to Austin, for some work, I was like, okay, see, you later, have fun. And then when I really felt into it, I was like, hang on a minute, you know, 21 years into businesses, probably time to give the US a red hot crack. And everything I'm always about is like putting myself into crazy situations, learning, and then kind of writing about or, you know, sharing the lessons learned. And so what I'm hoping is for a lot of other Australian businesses and people who are wanting to, you know, expand into the US, I can kind of chart the journey and help them and give them a leg up and say, these are all the agents I use. These are all the ways that I did it. So I'm kind of documenting everything, every day. And so far, it's been, it's been fun. It's been wild. 

SH: Fantastic. That's so helpful. It's a good move, I think. I think it's great. I love it, you talk a lot about purpose, which I think is a really good place to start the chat. Did it take you a while to find your purpose, and is finding your purpose, the sort of the secret sauce to some of your success today? 

6:39
LM: It took me forever. I mean, when I say ever, ever, like solid 30 years at least.
So for anyone who is you know, scratching their head and going, what's my purpose, like, it really took me a lot of failure, and a lot of trying a lot of things to kind of land on, you know, really what I believe my purpose is in this life. And that is really, for Collective Hub three words, it's to ignite human potential. And for me, it's to be an entrepreneur for entrepreneurs living my life out loud, showing that anything's possible. And that sort of, I guess, everything flows from there. And for anyone that's looking for their purpose, because they really do believe, to answer your question, once you get clear on what it is that you really want to do, then everything else just has a way of kind of working itself out. I know it sounds quite woowoo. But I have found that definitely to be true. And also what it does is because as an entrepreneur and someone who gets overzealous and excited about life, what would happen is I'll have a conversation with you and guaranteed through this conversation, I'm going to be like, Oh my god, Steph, we should do this together. And then what happens is it brings me back, so that I'm not starting a bunch of different businesses or doing a lot of other crazy stuff. It brings me back to Okay, is that on track? Am I focused? It's kind of a way to steer me and ensure that I'm kind of living in my genius, so and I guess, but for anyone wanting to look for their purpose. I mean, I've written a couple of books on this now. And I always write from a layman's perspective, and then I put myself in and learn and share. But I would say there's kind of three things to think about. One is kind of what what excites you what makes you want to jump out of bed every morning, what kind of juices you up, and you just think, oh, gosh, I just, you know, time flies by and I feel so alive. Number two is start to listen to that external validation piece. So what are other people saying you know, our staff, you're a great connector of staff, you're great at this, whatever. And then you go, ah, do those two things marry up is there you know, is there something in that? And then if you've got to make a business or living out of it, the third piece is, is there a commercial reality? Like can you actually make this make money? Is there a market? Are there people willing to buy whatever it is your selling? And if not, then maybe the purpose is more a passion and you know, you go with that and then you dig into well, what's the, the, you know, what is the iteration of my purpose? And how does that manifest itself? That's brilliant cuz it's so true. We love chasing bright shiny lights, right? I think entrepreneurs or creatives, lots of us whatever we whatever our background that looks fun over there. Oh, that looks fun over there. And suddenly, two years has passed and we're not focused and all over the shop. And I did that for the first 11 years. Really 2001 to 2013 ish. So 1112 I am I over serviced under charged was everything to everyone didn't have systems and processes in place. I was just kind of grabbing it anything. So if you were like, Lisa, can you help me write a business plan? I'd be like, Yeah, let's do it. They said, Can you help me do some branding? Yeah, let's do it. And I was just kind of saying yes to everything and kind of having fun, but nothing was wrong. Like I couldn't replicate anything. Therefore I couldn't scale and just was I was reinventing the wheel every single time.

10:00
LM: Feels great for my clients. But in the end, I just felt burnt out and probably a bit resentful. And yeah, it just wasn't a clever way to do it. So now I'm much more purpose driven. And yeah, and kind of love what I get to do every day. Yeah, that's great. Well, that brings me to collective hub. So you launched the collective hub, as a print mag in 2013. I love is no experience in the industry. Everyone's like, the industry is dead, it's dying. What are you doing? 

SH: Within 18 months, the print mag was in 37 countries. So a huge success, a crazy ride? What was that, like? What was that time like?

10:42
LM: It was the most magical, insanely incredible time that I've ever experienced. Although I'm going through a very similar iteration of that. Now, I'm pleased to say

10:57
LM: it's what I would say about that is that it was because I truly stepped into my purpose at the time, and I really felt for and this is important for anyone listening, I feel like a lot of our best ideas come from a pain point or a time of adversity. And whilst we might not see it at the time, and it might just like, come out sideways, and might get pissed off or angry or frustrated. For me, now, I kind of tend to try and lean into those periods of uncomfortability. Because I generally know that that's where the gold lies. So for me, the whole idea for collective hub really came from, I was kind of bored with where I was, I was comfortable in my business. But it wasn't exciting me.

11:41
LM: I was surrounded by amazing entrepreneurs and thought leaders and creatives. And I just was frustrated with the media at the time, because I kept reading stories about you know, Steph is great, or Steph is this. And I was like, but how did Steph do it? Why didn't you do it.

11:58
And so it's kind of like, sometimes if we see a problem or a gap in the market, or we're wanting something for ourselves, then got to just step in and create it. And so that's what I did. So my idea was just bring all these amazing humans together into one kind of format. And I had been doing print in various iterations for a while, but I'd never really done anything digitally. So whilst I had no experience in magazines whatsoever, I had even less experience in digital at the time. So for some reason, I just decided to create a magazine. And the thing about that is, when you truly feel into ongoing this, I just have to do is I have to give a voice to people. I want to share people's stories, I want to shed light on all of this and show what's under the hood. And in doing so I want to inspire and educate other people then it's just like this thing just had a life of its own and it exploded. So I literally went overnight in February 2013 to nobody knowing who was who I was no one caring probably much, maybe a small circle of people to like literally the next day this thing just blew up. I had to hire a personal assistant, which was my first staff member within about a week because I think I had something like 600 emails like the day after launch, like it just exploded. And yeah, within 18 months, we were in 37 countries. The second year like not that far into launch, I had this email from the Office of Anna Wintour and asked me to go meet with her in New York, which is amazing and Richard Branson invited me to go to Necker Island. I've since shared a stage with him five times. And I mean, it just, you name for me my wildest dream. I mean, it was beyond my wildest dreams. It was just the high level highs and I was at the centre of just such a big, global brand.
14:06
And then it all came crashing down so you can pull the part where
14:11
the crashing down. 

SH: I read that you like you were ready for the ride. 11 years you'd done the work you've given up alcohol, it was time. 

LM: Yes, 7 and a half years ago, so I gave up drinking on the eighth of November 2004. My partner always says and we got I have the this weird memory for dates. I can tell you started by visits 22nd of October 2000. What gave me more than this happened and like everything I know dates, I don't know why, which is quite handy when I'm an author and a sort of have to think of things sequentially. So it's handy. Yeah, I was ready. I was really ready. I mean, I'd done a lot of personal development by that stage by 2013. And, and also I'd been at businesses for a long time. So as kind of

15:00
Ready to either take a break or step into like the greatest iteration of my purpose? And I chose to do the latter. And honestly, it just exploded. 

SH: Why did you give up alcohol? If you don't mind me asking?

LM: Oh, well, many reasons. So for me, I mean, it's a long time ago, but I remember like it was yesterday, it was just that unpredictability around my drinking. And so some nights I might have, like, you know, wondering can be fine. Other nights, I'd like binge drink and loose lips sink ships.
15:37
And thank God, it was before social media as all I could say.
15:41
And I was using it as a crutch and a way to kind of self sabotage. And by that, I mean, I was using it, like, just being a party person, and therefore just surrounding myself with people who just wanted to party all the time. And you know, stuff I just inside of me, I just had this yearning for more. And I just knew that I was destined to do something great. And so whilst ever I was keeping myself kind of drunk and small, and like that, I was just squashing every little bit of me that was inside my soul that was yearning to burst out. And I say to people, like, do you have to give up drinking, but be courageous enough to find out what it is that you're using? To hold yourself that you know, and, I mean, it was a huge thing to put down the alcohol was really difficult at the time, because everyone I knew drained, competed. So I had to change my lifestyle completely. And but you know what, as soon as I did that, and I started doing therapy and doing the work and understanding what was behind the need for that. My entire life changed. And, you know, my business started taking off, I mended relationships with my family, and all sorts of stuff. So yeah, I kind of talked about like, the pre giving up drinking Lisa and the post giving up drinking, Lisa. And now a lot of people know me from my drinking days.

17:07
It was a very different person, although, I would still be the first person to dance on a table at any event, and imagine just lunch or dinner. I just do it consciously.

17:19
SH: That's great. Good for you. Yeah. And I love that you were saying that suddenly, you were after launching the collective hub? Suddenly, you were on the on the red carpet with the editor of Edwina McCann, on the editor of Vogue, just being like, hey, hey, guys. Hi. I'm Lisa, what's going on?

17:37
LM: That was the weirdest time I tell you why. Because when I thought about the magazine, I didn't really think about it as a magazine link. I because I've never been in that world. And I'd never worked for media or magazines. And so I just thought, I'm putting this thing together to give people a voice and to you know, share the stories and inspire other people. I just didn't it didn't even cross my mind. I mean, that might sound crazy, but that I would be an editor and a publisher. And of course, when the magazine really exploded, suddenly it was Edwina McCann, editor for Kelly Hush, she was Harper's Bazaar at the time, Justin Cullen who was editor of Elle, me, and one or two others.

18:21
These people, these women are amazing. And they've, you know, been working on it for such a long time to earn their stripes as a, you know, one of the best editors in Australia and who was little me like, hey, but I mean, they're also kind to me. And I think what was kind of beautiful was that

18:42
I came along at a time that a lot of people were saying print was dead or dying. And so collective hug very much became a bit of a poster child, I think, for the industry as well to say, actually, guys, you know, this can work and look at this. And so yeah, it was really nice that they were also kind to me, and also that we were able to live the industry up as well. 

SH: That's fantastic. You had to break up with your CFO at the time, he was a bit too conservative. He did I think he'd worked at PwC PricewaterhouseCoopers for like 20 something years and and

19:16
he said to me, I've never come across anyone with such an appetite for risk. I just was like Greg, I have to bring up with you I cannot do this and I mean far out stuff I was like really going for and I was taking a lot of risks and I get that he needed to protect me probably probably for good reason. But I needed to be set free and just go for it because I was disrupting and bucking the status quo and really chatting territory in a way that had been around forever but I was doing it my way. And so to have you know, conservative people in suits and beige boardrooms around me well that

20:00
just was not going to cut it. So I needed to like get some real GRE and, you know, harness that super energy and just go for it really love it. Yeah, no risk and resilience is my favourite book of yours. So it's all about realising that sometimes you have to break up something you love to remake it, Collective Hub. 

SH: So five years 54 issues into the mag, you took that step to break the thing that you had started and pivot into something new. So what was it like, when you realise that you had to let go of staff and an office? 

20:38
LM: Yeah, so for context, and I mean, I love that book. I mean, it's a great book, I probably wouldn't never read it again, because it's like heart wrenching, but it's a great book. For people. It's almost like a cautionary tale about what not to do. And Daring and Disruptive one of my books prior to that is great about, like how to start and how to buck the trend and how to enter a highly saturated market and all that kind of stuff. risk and resilience. So yeah, so I always come up with the topic first, and then I lean into it, and I write. So what happened was because the business had grown so quickly, across so many different geographic locations, and verticals, print, digital and events, it had kind of exploded, and that kind of scale, which is sort of ironic, you know, here, I'd wanted my whole life to have a big, amazing purpose driven business, suddenly I step into it, it's too big. And the problem with that is you don't know what you don't know what to do there. And I would say I'm a great visionary leader, connect, great at doing deals, and great creative. And I say things before they exist. I'm not great at being a CEO. I'm not great at HR, IT, you know, finance, legal law, all that stuff. Can't really stand. But you know, all these years, and I need to do it, obviously. But um, but because the business was growing, and I was pushing boundaries and taking so many risks and just going Ah, let's go for it. I mean, if anyone's watched the recent Uber document or the Uber series, it's true. Yeah. Yeah, it's in the US. I just watched her traverse. And then, you know, the, when the week crashed with Adam, we work. I mean, if you take those two men, I was probably a bit that combined, because you've got to have that girl, I'm just gonna go for it. I'm going to break things and like just crashed. But what happened is, I was doing that. But to do that, you need to have your polar opposites. So for me, I need to have a data orientated, detail driven person who is, you know, looking after the systems and the processes and the checks and balances and being intimate with the finances. And I didn't have that person by my side. And so what happened was, we were haemorrhaging cash. I hadn't set the model up correctly. And so it was a fascinating place to be because, in one sense, I was at the centre of this big global lovemark. I mean, everyone seemed to sounds that you did this. Thank you, Lando. Love it. Yeah. And then the underneath, I just, it's my fault. You know, that's all my fault. I hadn't set it up correctly. And so I did make a decision in April 2018. To break it. And what that meant was having to like by then I've been in business, what 17 years or something. I had never let any staff were never met anyone redundant. And suddenly, I had to make all these people redundant. And it was excruciatingly horrendous and horrible. And I spent most days going home and just, you know, lying in a foetal position on the bathroom floor, it like killed every bit of my soul. But inevitably,

LM: 24:02
I had a very smart person by my side, Damien, who is incredible, and I dedicated risk and resilience to him. He came in and he cut the guts out of the business. And he was like a, what I would call a point and shoot game. He took the emotion out of it, and he said, if you're going to survive, and not go bankrupt, or you know, and I didn't want to do that, because I was like, I want to do everything properly and love every supplier and every staff member as much as I can. So he was like, he would tell me today you do this today, you do this and I just for six weeks. I just listened to what he said. And so I managed to kind of wind it right back to real basics. And then I was kind of left sitting there going, Wow, okay, that was a ride. What's next? Yeah, but you know what I was

24:52
second or in equal measure to starting the magazine. It was the most important and courageous thing that I've ever done.

25:01
Yeah, the whole process, the whole ride is still here. It's like you blow it all up congratulate.

25:07
Well, I blow it all up. But then it's like a little bit of Phoenix Rising. And then I have built, built built over the last

25:17
nearly four years. Yeah, build it back up. And it's actually much, much, much, much bigger and much more sustainable,

25:26
much more profitable, much more efficient than it was then. And it just looks different. But essentially, it serves the same purpose. And, yeah, it's a much better, healthier place to be for everyone.

SH: 25:41
Now, we're hearing a lot about the great resignation, especially post COVID. Post natural disasters, the Northern Rivers, deadly flooding, which you know about yourself.

25:54
big shift away from the hustle and the grind. So moving towards a life of purpose and startups, there's so hot right now, are you hearing stories of more and more women wanting to move into that startup entrepreneurial culture?

26:11
Yeah, I mean, all day, every day, I feel like, in a way, I'm in a self creative bubble, or around that, because I'm very surrounded by an immersed in the startup scene. But suddenly, when I launched collective hub in 2013, and sadly, when I launched my first business in 2001, like no one talks about startups or entrepreneurs, maybe they talked in terms of small business, but I never heard the word startup entrepreneur back then. So I was kind of a bit ahead of my time or whatever. Now, I feel like yeah, every second person or every person always wants to have their own business, or at least a side hustle, or, you know, wants to be a creator. This, you know, a myriad of other things. And I think that's, you know, it's very exciting. I also think I remember when I launched collective, and I'd be doing a speaking gig on stage. And people would literally run at me afterwards and say, Lisa, I love my job. And I was like, oh, no, like I got crazy you the College of Epcot correct this mass resignation, because we also do need, you know, intrapreneurs, within corporations, you know, great creators, innovators, thought leaders, people with purpose to be within corporations, so that we keep them also amazing. We can't let all the good people go out to start their own thing. So and also, you know, entrepreneurship and having your own business, it's tough. Even it is. So it's like, yeah, it's not for everyone, you got to have that, a certain amount of grit and hustle and grind, and, you know, hear the word know, multiple times a day and be okay with that. Really. That's so true. 

SH: And your new book is all about this startup to scale up. It steps us through everything we need to know to set us up for success when starting a new business. And I love the beautiful linen bound, kind of like the the cover. And then you've got a business plan a journal and affirmation cards cards to motivate the whole thing. It's like a fashion capsule. I love it. 

LM: Yes. Beautiful. Thank you. I'm trying to do that.
28:29
And it's taken me a long time. And well, that book, firstly is it's probably one of the most useful books I've ever written. Because, as I said, normally, I come up with a topic. And then I write in real time, as I'm living it and learning it, which I love. I mean, I just love it. I'm doing one at the moment. And that's 6000 words in on America, and like how to grow a business in America, and I'm just loving writing it because I'm in it. Instead of just scale, it was different because I read it retrospectively. And I kind of went back into okay, what are all the things I've learned in nearly 21 years of business? Like, how do you come up with an idea? You know, how do you find, you know, partners? How do you collaborate? You know, how do you find distributors, marketing, branding, you know, finance, I can't cover every single aspect of business. But also because I'm a entrepreneur and I like to move through through things quickly, I made a point of writing it so that it's whilst it's 400 pages, it's all very snackable digestible. Everything is like things that you can action or implement straightaway. And then I was like, which took me a lot of time. And my editors, I did a summary at the end of all 14 chapters of 10 points. So it's like 140, cheat notes all the way through. So if people are like, I can't be bothered to read all of these, you can literally go to the back of each chapter and it has like, you know, 140 like snackable to dues that will help you
30:00
Um, and I love that you said it's like a fashion capsule. I decided a while ago, because so much of our distribution into physical stores is through lifestyle stores, I was like, we should start being like a fashion label. So I'm kind of disrupting the print industry again in a different way, and make it so that they are beautifully designed capsules. And yeah, and that's working really well. And I'm loving it. So yeah, it's, it's good, and hopefully super helpful for people.

(Continues)