CEO of Connected au, Mea Campbell
“Resilience is something that's an awesome by-product of business, you've got to be super resilient, persistent and motivated.”
Set-backs, heartbreaks and times where you have your head in your hands repeating WTF over and over again while trying to solve a problem – if you’re in business, you know the feels.
Small Business really is a journey of resilience and innovation that my guest today knows all about.
Mea Campbell is the trailblazing founder and CEO of Connected Au, an organization committed to combating loneliness and building connections at a community level, and she knows exactly what it means to find yourself in the midst of WTF…
You’ll hear about:
Embracing your impulsivity with ideas
What happens when an idea moves faster than you were prepared for
How to turn a goodwill project into a self-sustaining business to continue the good-will at scale.
When new revenue generating ideas don’t pan out
Why big business interest isn’t always the gift you hope for
Not getting hung up on the outcome of potential business growth opportunities
And always keeping a “what can we do next” mentality when things don’t pan out how we’d like
If you’re in the need for a bump in business confidence and valuable lessons on navigating through uncharted entrepreneurial waters, strap in because you’re about to get just that.
Check out the Connected au Website connectedau.com.au
Follow in IG @connected_au
Listen to Mea’s beautiful Podcast “Connected”
And don’t forget to follow Unemployed & Afraid on IG , Threads and LinkedIn
And show your support for this independent podcast and small business by shouting your host a cuppa at buymeacoffee.com/unemployedpod
You can reach your host on email kim@unemployedandafraid.com.au on IG and on LinkedIn
Keep scrolling for the conversation transcript…
Kim Kerton [00:00:00]:
I'm here with Mea Campbell, lawyer, speaker, mother, and founder and CEO of Connected Au, a for purpose company fighting the loneliness epidemic in Australia. Connected Au provides education and community programs to individuals, schools and corporates across the country, supporting over 45,000 individuals over the past three years through their Connection programs, earning the endorsement of influential figures such as Chris Hemsworth and Sam Neil. Their impressive corporate client list includes companies such as Canva, Disney, Deloitte, Salesforce and Extend with their corporate and school program, bringing the Connected Au team directly into the boardrooms of these elite businesses and schools, offering education, team building and community service activities focused on combating loneliness and fostering connection. With a solid foundation, a track record of success, and a roster of prestigious clients, connected Au are poised to expand their reach and make an even greater impact in combating loneliness in Australia. From their famous letterbox project to online clubs and events, education programs for schools and businesses, and even quick and fun mini courses, it's a business built to embody action, foster community and radiate joy, happiness and vivid colors to help vulnerable people feel visible and valued. And with a vision like that, we cannot wait to hear your story. Mea. Welcome to Unemployed and afraid.
Mea Campbell [00:01:27]:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. That was a great it was just great listening to you. Then I feel like we didn't realize we were doing all that. But yeah, there is a lot just listening to that.
Kim Kerton [00:01:36]:
We often don't see the wood from the trees when we're deep in our business about the impact that it can potentially be having on audiences, on customers and consumers, on humans. So I'm glad that you enjoyed that and I'm glad you're doing the work that you're doing because it is epic. But before we get into that, I would love to know a little more about you and through the lens of someone else. How would your best friend describe you?
Mea Campbell [00:01:59]:
Oh gosh, probably just, I don't know. Full of beans is the word, or full of ideas. I don't know. I think they'd probably say I'm just pretty fast and driven is probably what I'd say. Maybe when I was younger it was more impulsive and risk taking. But now I think that I don't know. I don't think anyone's ever asked me a question like that before. What would people say about me?
Kim Kerton [00:02:21]:
I think I can relate to the impulsive youth into driven adulthood. That seems very close to my heart, that description. Now before Connected Au was a real and impactful business. Who were you?
Mea Campbell [00:02:37]:
So it's interesting, I mean it's strange now when people ask me that question, what did you do before this? I mean, I was a lawyer before I started Connected Au, but people often say, so you're a lawyer now. It's one of those things like it's strange to it feels like it's so long ago. It's only been three years, but it feels like it's so long ago, but before Connected Au, I was working as a lawyer, mum to two little girls, wife, just the normal, pretty standard stock standard sort of story, nothing particularly interesting and definitely not planning a business or planning on doing anything like this.
Kim Kerton [00:03:08]:
What was your career like as a lawyer? What did your day to day sort of look like in that space?
Mea Campbell [00:03:13]:
It depends where I was. So I started in commercial law, so just in general practice. So just in a country town in New South Wales in general. So it's just pretty much doing house sales and contracts and family law and different things like that. And then I moved from there after a while to Juvenile Justice. So I worked for Department of justice, juvenile justice, and that was really impactful. That was amazing. I absolutely loved that work and that job.
Mea Campbell [00:03:39]:
It was the feeling of just really making a bit of a difference, I suppose, and interesting work and getting to connect with young offenders. So really enjoyed that job. And then I was actually on maternity leave from that job when I started Connected Au.
Kim Kerton [00:03:52]:
So tell me about that seed, that inkling of Connected au, where this idea started from and what were some of your first few steps into taking it from outside of your brain into real life?
Mea Campbell [00:04:05]:
Well, I feel like whenever I've told the story a few times to not media, but in a couple of podcasts or a few different places, and every time I've done it, I've sort of been like, oh, Mea, stop. Why do you give so much information? Because it's literally me saying it was not done very well, there was no plan. This is how much of a circus the whole show has been, but unfortunately, it's just the truth and it's just how it's all come about. So we lived on a property about 100 town called Walgut. So pretty remote town for a few years and there was a crippling drought out here and had a little baby and so lived while out there and was working for Juvenile Justice. And I think now, looking back on it, I was probably really isolated out there. So I think that's maybe where this, like, a little seed set in. People have said to me before, was there a reason I didn't intentionally do it because of that time? But we were out there for some time and then moved back to Dubbo because of this crippling drought.
Mea Campbell [00:04:58]:
So I'm originally from Dubbo, so moved back just when COVID hit, like literally the month of us moving back to Dubbo. COVID pretty much just, well, didn't lock everyone down, but it started, you know, when it first started, the talk of it and all the fear that started generating. And as I said, I was not working at time or I was just doing some legal work just for friends. So just a bit of work at home, just working from home a little bit for myself. And when I said before I'm a bit impulsive, I really have that brain and tendency, so I don't think about anything too particularly for very long, only a couple of minutes, maybe, for big things. And so I just sometimes have ideas and it's just like a compulsion to do something and then I think about it much later and I've done that my whole life. And, yeah, obviously when you sort of growing up or at uni and whatever it was, I was like, Leah, why are you not a little bit irresponsible? My mum would always say, Just stick at something, Mea. Anyway, so that popped itself up again when COVID, the start of COVID And I honestly was in bed on my phone, my husband was away and I was in bed on my phone and I just had this random thought.
Mea Campbell [00:06:02]:
I was thinking about older people for some reason, just about how because there was a lot of stories at the time about how scary this was and so I was just thinking about older people and my grandfather popped into my head. He'd passed away a few years earlier at 95, and he'd had this incredible life, like, I want to write a book about him, just the war and all these amazing things. Sydney to Hobart and Champion Showrunner. Like all these amazing stories but towards the end of his life, the last 5 or 10 years, your life becomes very small, your world becomes really small. He was legally blind, totally deaf, really relying on my family, my mum and his close family, to care for him and just be everything, take him, just seeing him, like his whole world. But he'd passed away a few years earlier. But at that time, I remember thinking, gosh, this would have been really difficult for him when this all started, and just the talk and the fear that was kind of going through. And so I thought about him and, gosh, that would have been terrible.
Mea Campbell [00:06:54]:
And then that led my brain within a few seconds to think of all the other people in a similar situation don't have that really tight close support network. And then I went on a deep on my phone laying there, I went on a bit of a deep dive into loneliness, connection, isolation. And so you just learned really quickly, like, some of it, it's quite startling. Loneliness costs Australia $2.5 billion annually. It's an equal risk factor for mortality of smoking, obesity, so an equal risk factor for death if you are lonely, as if you were smoking. So huge stats. And this is nothing that I ever learned before. I was never in the health industry like law is so far I've removed from any of this.
Mea Campbell [00:07:31]:
So I went on a bit of a quick deep dive and then I just thought to myself, well, I'm just going to create something called connected au. That name came to me straight away. I thought, I'm just going to create something called Connected Au and make some programs to connect people. Went to sleep, woke up the next day, dropped the girls off at school, whatever they were doing, and honestly got my laptop out and literally created. I went to Wix. I googled and I googled Wix. I made a little crappy Wix website. I did the legals really quickly because I knew how to do all that sort of stuff.
Mea Campbell [00:07:59]:
And then literally made an Instagram page and a Facebook page in the day. And so it was literally all up and running within that day. And I had thought of two things that I was going to do, and one was something called the Letterbox Project and then some online clubs. And so my thought process for that was because obviously the older people was how I kind of started thinking about it. I thought the letterbox project mail, they love handwriting, handwritten mail, takes them back to their youth or something that's accessible to them. It's beautiful, tangible. So I thought letterbox project is a really cool idea. And then it's online club, so it'd be an online book club and cookie club, et cetera.
Mea Campbell [00:08:37]:
So literally just popped them on the website so there was no planning behind that. And then started an instrument page. And then just within a couple of weeks or within a week or two, there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. Within a month there were thousands of people involved. And all I had done at the back end of all this was make some Google Docs with a button on mywyx website that clicks through the people with their name. Pretty much just some Excel spreadsheets that people would sign up. It was all free and they'd sign up. And so people started signing up.
Mea Campbell [00:09:06]:
And really quickly I realized that, wow, I hadn't planned any of this and there's people doing it, so this is busy. So I actually made the clubs and everything dormant. And I thought, oh, well, people just want this letterbox project. So that started happening. There are manually excel spreadsheets. I'd match people up. And so for context, for those people listening, because of my background in law, I didn't mean to make it really unique, but I made it very safe. So I was like, oh, liability, and sharing information.
Mea Campbell [00:09:33]:
So I have made this really unique, essentially Penpal program, but where you don't share any added viable information. And all the letters are vetted. So someone signs up to run it to someone and they get married, 97, lives in an age care home in Brisbane, was a retired nurse and loves walking on the beach or loves cats or some bio. And then they write that Lenovo, but it actually gets posted somewhere and vetted and then sent on. Then the person replies. So there's just this system of vetting, essentially. And so this was with my little Excel spreadsheets, and I thought there might be like 100 people all up total, but when they started getting into the hundreds and then thousands, it was like, oh, okay, I'm going to match none above 752 over here with reference 800 and whatever you are. And then I had some volunteers, but I had to get some volunteers to help me with the letters that started flying in to be reading and processing and sending out.
Mea Campbell [00:10:21]:
And then really quickly realized that was pretty out of control because I had no way of vetting. It was all just manual. So writing emails and hundreds, you can imagine how much of an absolute circus that became because no tracking, no project management couldn't remember, like, referencing. And it was really, really messy. And so within the first, maybe four months, there were over 10,000, 20,000 heaps thousands of people signed up and participating. And I had in total in the first year about 60 volunteers that were just helping manage it all. I was actually paying a friend of mine to manage the volunteers because I discovered that volunteers are actually a lot of work in itself. So I was paying my friend to manage these volunteers, and everything was out of my pocket.
Mea Campbell [00:11:00]:
And we were posting on all this mail, and that was costing so much money, and I was just paying for that personally. And then it got to this point where I realized I have no tech system set up to actually manage any of this. So then I had to engage a tech specialist to build me this special workflow and all these processes. And then we hit the six month mark and media got involved. Celebrities, as you mentioned before, Chris Hemsworth, big businesses were calling, getting involved. As I said, national media had happened. And so by the end of the first year, it was enormous. It was all over the media.
Mea Campbell [00:11:34]:
Long list of these cool people and businesses and all these people wanting to be involved and tens of thousands of people. And got to the end of the year, I think it was about October, and I was at a point of, holy crap, like, what on earth is this? And am I going to do with this? Because I can't fund something indefinitely. You'd fall off your chair if I told you how much it costs. In the first year that I just and I was still working, doing legal work to pay for this project that I was doing, but that got to October. And I was like, okay, stop. You need to think this through. What are you going to actually do? How are you going to sustain this? This is exhausting. And so I decided didn't get any advice or help, but I just decided sponsorship seems like a good idea.
Mea Campbell [00:12:12]:
There's all this attention on it. Let's see if I can just get a sponsor to get some advertising and help. Just keep it going for a little while. So luckily I had this wonderful connection in Sydney. Someone had connected me with this wonderful person in Sydney who's like a specialist in sponsorship reached out to her and within two weeks, yeah, the wonderful Tetley Tea had signed a contract, but significant amount of money to fund it for the next twelve months. And I had said to myself and to her, I said, look, if there's no interest by the end of November, I'm just going to essentially shut up shop and say that was a lovely little thing that happened for a year, close the books pretty much. But yeah, they signed on really quickly in the first two years and so then I thought that would be a period of rest and recovery. Oh, you know, rest and this is going to be easy now.
Mea Campbell [00:12:52]:
Like, I've got this amazing sponsor on board and it's going to sustain itself, but really quickly. I was wrong about that. And it's just been that snowball chasing my tail this entire time.
Kim Kerton [00:13:02]:
Congratulations to you for surviving through that period, but also just owning that and owning that period. I mean, the best businesses start like this. There's this rhetoric that exists that when we have something that's going to be both meaningful to us and commercially viable and successful to us, that we go into it this confident individual who has a business plan in place. And we run with it and we pivot, we do stuff and it's hard, but we get to the end and it's like, yay, look how fantastic this is. But just I love how candidly you share about that because I think the best ideas, if we overthought them in that instance, you may never have gotten started and may have talked yourself out of it a million times. I cannot, I guess, resonate on the level of which you've just described, but I can understand because I have had a somewhat similar experience in this podcast, which is you start something you want to do because you're passionate about it and you want to be there for people in some way. You want to make things that you feel you need and other people might need that are going to make the world better and easier to live in for whatever reason. Mine is around encouraging myself and others to actually start a business and keep going with it instead of thinking that you can't do it because you're not making sell out within 12 hours and $100,000 within 5 minutes.
Kim Kerton [00:14:33]:
And then all of a sudden you end up with this thing on your hands where you're like, how the f do I commercialize this and make this possible? Because the money that you end up spending and the money I've end up spending on this podcast, my God, I definitely didn't expect that to happen. So remind me to get your sponsorship person after this.
Mea Campbell [00:14:51]:
Oh, for sure. And there's just so many elements to it of when that sort of happens. Because not only is there like, I don't know about you, but I just becoming really interested in things and then just really just full throttle into whatever it is at the time. So there was that element of I'm now interested in this thing, but also the momentum, like momentum encouraging and so it was this constant feedback cycle of wow, this is cool, but then that's also mixed. And so you've obviously had all that, like, the encouragement, and it's pretty thrilling and you're driven, but then there's a whole heap of pressure and the potential to fail and the more visible this whole thing got with me and the bigger people that were involved and there's also just a huge element of pressure that's on it as well.
Kim Kerton [00:15:37]:
How did you support yourself through that? Because loneliness, as you talk about so much, is very prevalent generally in that older demographic you were talking about that sparked this. But loneliness in business can be really challenging as well. So how were you going through that period and supporting yourself?
Mea Campbell [00:15:53]:
I mean, it's a great question. To be perfectly honest with you. I don't think I had actually thought about myself and really stopped, I suppose, until this year. And as I said, I'm a very driven person, perhaps obsessive, and the kind of person that if I think about something, I'll just quickly go like I really just don't have a stop in between thoughts and doing things. And what that means is that there's just this role like I just go into something and I'm so really interested and so nothing worried me at the time. Obviously, I found it really difficult, there's a lot of pressure and try to figure it out. But in terms of loneliness or business, is this difficult or hard? That didn't really come into it was more just how am I going to do this or keep this going or solve this problem or get this where it needs to be? And it really has just been a process of figuring I nearly swore then because it's been such a process of figuring this show out, this whole show. And so the end of the first year when I was just trying to get the sponsorship, a lot of people were saying, why don't you make this a charity NFP get funding, get government funding or grants and whatever, I thought so I've had a lot of that was never a question.
Mea Campbell [00:17:05]:
I've had a lot of experience in that space and I'm just not interested in it. There's this inconsistency of funding you're at a cliff edge and also you also have to then do things to conform to fitting whatever guidelines it is that's giving you the money. And so I just had no interest in that. I wanted to be able to do something completely free and make an impact. And since now I'm a really strong believer in business making impact. It does not have to be they can be synonymous. You don't have to just be a charity or an NFP to do good in the community. So I was really adamant got the Tetley sponsorship and as I said, maybe for a minute there I was like breathing a sigh of relief of amazing.
Mea Campbell [00:17:40]:
Like I got rid of all the volunteers, I said thank you very much graciously and said no longer needed. And I got it out of my kitchen table and house and got a little office in Dubbo and hired someone to literally help and they were just processing letters and doing some admin and I thought that would be a really comfortable time period. But within that next twelve months and because of that, because I thought it was going to be, yep, this is going to be good, now we're comfortable. I then opened back up the clubs because of being the way I am and not thinking anything through really I was like, great, this is perfect. We'll open the clubs back up. So open these four clubs back up and online events so each club would have an online event, opened all that back up and so the second year was just building all these programs back out there and what happened again didn't learn. It was really, really popular and things like the book club for instance, we have a different book every month and I invite the guest and so we started having amazing wills. You know, Australia's biggest retail success story maturei was in the over the course of that year, we had some amazing celebrities, and just not even celebrities, just amazing authors involved.
Mea Campbell [00:18:44]:
And so that then grew more attention and more people joined, and there was more pressure. And so then it got to a point really quickly in the second year, where I was like, okay, in the second year, it's probably only a few months of comfort. Really quickly, this is growing. There's no way this is that ever you're going to get sponsorship that's going to sustain this project. Like there's tens of thousands of people already every time a letter comes in and goes out like, do you know how much a stamp costs? I certainly didn't at the time did not plan that that costs money. Envelopes cost money. Someone's time processing cost money. Every time it grew by one person it just made it more unsustainable actually.
Mea Campbell [00:19:19]:
And I realized really quickly you're never going to get sponsorship for that amount of money. And so then I really tried to figure out how do you do this? Do you make service based programs or do know? And we experimented a few things. Massive failures though. So I thought stationery and I thought, oh, someone suggested know you've got this huge mailing list, everyone's loving what you're doing, get into some products and at the time we were having all these big brands and amazing people reaching out to us, and Hallmark was one of them. So Hallmark reached out and said, we want to get involved. We don't have any money. Can't sponsor, can't be another sponsor, but we'd love to get involved. Can we be an in kind? Can we give you heaps of stock? So I was like, great, this will be it.
Mea Campbell [00:19:57]:
We'll make product. We'll make a beautiful stationery box with some cards and lovely, do this lovely thing and we'll sell that, and that'll be sustainable. Oh, my gosh, that was never going to work. Now I know that who thinks that's actually going to work? And even just being so inexperienced in products. So I found this beautiful, beautiful, hard white box and bossed gold print on the front, and all of these boutique like bits of paper and pens and all my cousins. That in itself wasn't a sustainable way to build, wasn't a good way to a smart way to build this stationery box. And so then selling it was a high price. I think it was $59 to sell this box, and it wasn't actually making any money.
Mea Campbell [00:20:36]:
And we also didn't take into account the weight of posting it, did not make any money on that. In fact, lost money on that. And so that really quickly was like, okay, that's not going to work. So it was a process in that second year of seriously thinking, how on earth is this going to work? And as the time went on, it just got more. In the second year, we went over 50,000 people involved in this project, the Letterbox project and club and things. So it's a lot of people. And we started having businesses. You've already mentioned a few, canberra, Disney, so really big businesses, big media, and there was a lot of pressure on me to figure out how to do this.
Mea Campbell [00:21:10]:
And so eventually I was able to sort of come up with a solution. I don't know if you just want me to keep telling the story or you have any questions about that middle year, that second year.
Kim Kerton [00:21:18]:
I do have a couple of questions about that. First of all, can I just say, if you ever feel the inkling to swear on this podcast, please go forth. I do it constantly.
Mea Campbell [00:21:26]:
Well, I quite need you when I talk about this process.
Kim Kerton [00:21:29]:
No, we're here for it. It's real language and it's an adult podcast for adults, so we're here for it. I do really enjoy the point that you brought up there with when you get into business in something and then it starts evolving itself. What we go to in terms of, okay, how can I build revenue off of this product base is always such a logical place to go. I think a lot of people look at like, merch and things like that and then do underestimate the scale. That one is particularly close to my heart as I'm in the very early phases of creating an ecom business. So shipping costs and cost of sale and all of those things. Just you don't tend to think about it early days because you get really excited about the potential.
Kim Kerton [00:22:06]:
So I think it's a fantastic point to bring up as part of it. But I think as you were going through that stage, were you drifting more towards a revenue model or a business model at that stage that could kind of exist more passively? Because it sounds like you were thinking, okay, look, passive execution. But then what seems to be coming through from sponsors, all these incredible brands, is actually, we want more of the service that you're offering, so you're going to need to figure out a way to build that for me. I'm really interested, I guess, in taking that opportunity. So seeing an opportunity land in your inbox hypothetically, head of Canva drops in, hey, we want to have you come and talk to our staff or do this collaboration. So that comes in as an opportunity. Tell me about some of the experiences you had then, responding specifically to those desires from brands with something that didn't exist yet. A service that didn't exist yet.
Mea Campbell [00:22:59]:
So it's so interesting. You're very observant and honestly, whenever I talk about this, it just reminds me of how little I knew and that I absolutely just flew blind for so long because, yeah, you've already just been super observant there saying service based V to passive. So what happened was the Letterbox Project was this huge thing. It was just one of the programs we were doing, but it was definitely the most popular and feel good. That was what everyone was really loving. And so the clubs and all these extra things were still amazing. But it was the Letterbox Project, that was where the 55,000 people were participating. That was why schools were calling.
Mea Campbell [00:23:34]:
That was why the media was calling. That's what people like Chris Hemsworth and Katrina Roundtree and all these names popping sign ups. And that's why Canberra and different businesses and schools called and it was free. And so I just had it in my brain for so long that it had to stay free. I did not ever think about changing that. And so what would happen is a brand would get in touch with us in that second year and honestly, the amount of people that reached out and wanted to be involved is so long. There were just so many random emails and Paul Mark's perfect example of someone, hey, we want to be involved. Unfortunately, because I just had no business, absolutely no idea about business.
Mea Campbell [00:24:08]:
The only thing I'd figured out so far that worked was this sponsorship. So whenever anyone got in touch with me, what do you think it was that I actually said, sponsorship, do you want to be a sponsor? And I've since learned that naming rights or the major sponsor is. Not as difficult to get. Oftentimes it is all the other little ones because that's not as interesting as actually owning it. So everyone that came in, literally, I could name a list, a dozen massive businesses that you would know in lots of different industries and fields that got in touch. And all I did was say, oh my God, absolutely, here's this sponsorship deck, what an idiot. Like, of course that was not going to work and no one got involved. And I had some in kind offers back and some of them I took on.
Mea Campbell [00:24:47]:
So that started happening when businesses were actually getting in touch, interested in the letterbox project, like Canva, Deloitte, who else? Act Cricket, honestly, CBA, the list of businesses that's been involved in the letterbox project was so long, my brain just did not think about that not being free. And so how it would work is someone get in touch and say, we have Deloitte. Deloitte were the first corporate, I think, to get involved. We have 350 staff, we want to hold this impact day where we do a letter running session. Can we be involved? And I was like, Yep. Sure thing. And then it kind of just kept happening. Of course, yes, just kept happening.
Mea Campbell [00:25:22]:
Medibank, all these different brands, didn't think about monetizing that until we were down the track a bit. Schools were the same, schools were getting involved. We've had hundreds and hundreds of schools involved and didn't think about monetizing that because I had this block in my mind for some reason that that was a free thing, that letterbox project. Anyway, so fast forward, what happened was the way that I solved this was pretty much doing everything you've said that you've hinted at. It was never going to be able to be solved by passive income like products over here that got that revenue from these products over here is going to sustain this giant service based thing because it really was service based. Just like you go to your Physio or your PT, people are literally coming to us for a service. And so what I ended up doing, and I remember we first of all thought about what you've just suggested, so solving it by making some of these big brands and schools pay. And so that was the first small change I tested in that second year, end of second year, and just got some of the businesses to pay and that went actually really well.
Mea Campbell [00:26:22]:
So bank of America was actually the first brand. They'd already done it when they got in touch for the second year, I actually said yes, absolutely. But to make the program sustainable, we have this fee now and it was really minimal. I think it was like $500 and I think they had like hundreds and hundreds of staff, so it's a really low cost and that worked. So we definitely got a couple of those. And at the end of that second year, any corporate who came to us, we said, there's now this feet, and also with schools, there's now this feet. And so that really worked. But we're only talking a couple of dozen, like we're not actually talking, not enough to sustain something that's got over 55,000 people in it that's costing per letter over $2.
Mea Campbell [00:26:59]:
So a lot of money was needed. And so again, that was just such a frustrating process because I was like, okay, well, that's working, but how are we going to grow the corporate and the score thing enough to sustain this giant thing? And so we tried all these little things and it was just not going to be enough. We just had more people joining, more demands put on us, demands that were great, but still demands of these big businesses being involved, or can you do this for us? Can you do this? Great, incredible opportunities. But it was all costing money and we needed more people. My little one person was absolutely not enough to handle this. And in that two year period, we'd had to upgrade our tech twice because we'd maxed out capabilities of what was happening, because you can imagine there's tens of thousands of people and we actually have to safely secure this information and keep track of who's matched with who. And the other problem was people were wanting follow up on their letters or what's happened here. So it's just a giant mess of everything.
Mea Campbell [00:27:53]:
So I was having to hire and more people. And then again it went back to me funding it. So I didn't ever pay myself when Tetle came on board, but then it went back to me funding not only not paying myself for doing this, but also funding it. And so again, it was just a really frustrating thing. And I remember it just got to the point where I was coming back from the coast, end of year two, driving back from my dad's coast, and I honestly was, I think this is weird, but I was talking to myself saying, just think like brain, like you are intelligent, just think of a solution to this. And so I was just driving along and I thought, okay, I'm going to make this monetized. So everyone and also a little bit of frustration and resentment came in as well when there were thousands of people and you'd get the occasional email that's, oh my God, why haven't I haven't got a reply back to my email that I sent two days ago? And I was like, well, oh my gosh, do you know you have no idea what's and so there's a bit of resentment developing as well. Like, this is free guys on Earth.
Mea Campbell [00:28:45]:
And so bit of frustration, a bit of anger, and a bit of just trying to fucking solve it. And I was like, okay, I'm going to monetize this. I'm going to make people pay. I'm going to make this a membership. I didn't actually know, hadn't researched memberships or subscriptions, didn't think about that. But I thought, and make people pay a small monthly amount. And so in the car, I was like, okay, Googling, what's that? Membership, subscription, membership, monthly recurring revenue. Had never heard of that before, but I was like, great.
Mea Campbell [00:29:09]:
So I threw on this podcast on the drive home, this basic Memberships 101. I was like, okay, so I'm going to do monthly recurring revenue. That's what's going to happen. And I literally got home. Then I thought to myself, I'm going to put this on a pay more on the website tomorrow. And my test again, like I did in the very first thing, I was like, if no one signs up, that's the answer. And I'm going to shut the whole show down. It's over just because this is sustainable, who's doing this in life? And so I did it.
Mea Campbell [00:29:35]:
And the next day, literally woke up, bang, bang, bang. I think I Googled like Member, Stack, whatever, and I just literally put a paywall on. And so anyone who signed, anyone who came to join anything, then had to pay. It was so modest. It was like $5 a month and $45 for the year because I couldn't get out of this concept of it had to be about free for everyone anyway. So that happened, made that change. And it was easy at the time, but the reason it was so low cost was the notion that it had to be free or feeling like this thing had to be free. Even though now I've learned and everyone now Ian lifeline we're chatting with and all these different places, there's so many reasons not to make things free.
Mea Campbell [00:30:12]:
People don't value free. You know, all of these different reasons why it should have been monetized, probably really early on. And so that was the test. And the next day I saw what would happen. Do you want me to just keep.
Kim Kerton [00:30:24]:
Yes, I am dying to know exactly how it felt looking at that in your emails and how the market responded to that. Because this is a big fear I think a lot of people have when they put any kind of product or service offering out there for free to then try and convert it into a membership. It's the fear that everybody is going to rain down hell on you as the creator or have an opinion or the whole thing is just going to go down in flaming glory. So, yes, I'd love to know what happened in your inbox the next day.
Mea Campbell [00:30:54]:
Well, luckily, luckily again, I didn't really think too much about it, to be honest. And I didn't worry. I was just like, you know what? This is what I'm doing. This is my solution, and that's the end of it. And so the next day, I think about seven people joined. I was like, oh, okay. So seven people have paid for it. Okay, so people will value it and we'll paid for it.
Mea Campbell [00:31:12]:
And then over the next week, yeah, I think it was a few hundred people in the first week. And I was like, great, at least I felt a bit comfortable that then, as every person joined, there was then recurring revenue to sustain the cost of that one person definitely wasn't enough though, because $5 a month did not cover even their postage. The envelopes also all the tech, if you actually break it down in person, we have a really complex system. It wasn't enough, but that was the change, that was the process. And so where we are now, I think in that first twelve months there's been over maybe we're up to about three and a half, 4000 paid people joining that membership. And the price went from $5 a month to $45. Really quickly learned. So it's just experimenting, right? Business, I think really I've changed it twice and so now it's $20.
Mea Campbell [00:31:58]:
If you want to join monthly, there's a six month offer and then there's an annual. And obviously it's discounts, like pretty much if you do it for the year, it's half price as opposed to monthly. And so you can imagine that recurring revenue, knowing that recurring revenue is huge and it has literally solved all of the problems. Honestly, it is like the key to the whole thing, sustainability. And there were obviously other problems and questions. What do we do about the other 50, the 55,000 people and what are you going to offer them? Is the letterbox, is everything included in the membership? So I'm sure there's lots of questions. I don't want to just keep talking though. So did you have any questions about that?
Kim Kerton [00:32:36]:
Well, the beautiful part about a podcast about you is that you do get to talk the whole time. Don't you worry about that. Look, I think I want to pull out just a couple of aspects on there, which is one early on that you touched on is when you get brands on board. So once you start getting brand interest into any kind of thing and you get brands on board, I think sometimes people underestimate the power of a free partnership in the first instance. So I guess this is both my way of saying to you, you might look back on that and go, god damn, why didn't I charge him a little bit more money to be involved or something to be involved. I think the benefit of seeing brands come on board with something is it encourages other brands to see that it's valuable. They don't necessarily know that that person hasn't paid for something. So it's just, I guess an accidental opportunity that comes out of that is being able to show big logos on a website really does raise the prestige level of whatever it is you're doing.
Kim Kerton [00:33:34]:
So anybody listening who's starting to build something, if you're battling with any frustration about oh God. I just don't want to give something away for free. I work so hard at it. There are benefits, but it is a long game, definitely. And that language that you brought up around first going to market, not with your users, but with your brands who are working with you to say you have to pay something, I think good on you for a doing it because that can be really, really scary. To quote a cost. But using the language, this has a cost associated in order for this to be commercially viable is something that any business and brand understands and you've got to use it well.
Mea Campbell [00:34:12]:
Not even commercially viable, just literally sustainable. It was literally just sustainable. So it can continue. But you're right and I love that point about this value to brands. Even they're not paid. Totally. And yeah, anyone listening, if you have the opportunity, definitely do it. And I did know that this is great.
Mea Campbell [00:34:30]:
Anyway, the problem is when you are deep down in the thick of having to make literally money to keep paying for things, you just don't get those pleasures of doing things like that. You actually just have to focus on. I was just focused on making some money.
Kim Kerton [00:34:48]:
Completely understandable. I have a few questions for you that I'm going to ask momentarily. But I do want to backtrack on those 55,000 existing members that were sitting there who had come on board for free, that you were looking to merge over into a subscription base. How did you approach that? What worked for you there and what.
Mea Campbell [00:35:04]:
Didn'T work for you so carefully? But also we made the membership and anyone knew who came had to pay. There was still a concession though. First of all, the concession was still free. So if you were senior people with disability, financial hardship, any of the boxes, you still got free access. So it didn't take long. And we ended up changing the free concession to a paid concession, just heavily reduced. So then it was all paid. And we did that because once we did the membership, the great thing was it actually improved everything.
Mea Campbell [00:35:32]:
Not just in a money sense, but it actually improved the whole program's efficiency. People were really invested, they'd paid. So they were just following through on things better, they were engaging better. All of the programs improved. And we really clearly saw then that these free concession people, you could see the difference then. They weren't engaging as well. They weren't actually valuing it. They weren't participating or taking it seriously.
Mea Campbell [00:35:54]:
And so we were like, you know what, that's it. Everything. There's going to be a pay concession. So we moved them to a pay concession and that's been perfect. So everything is growing. But I still feel okay with that. Knowing that there is a concession. But the 55,000 people, that took a little bit of time to think about because I thought we've let these people connect for a couple of years.
Mea Campbell [00:36:14]:
They've made these beautiful connections and they thought it was free. And what happens if we make them suddenly pay now? Is everyone going to be just up in arms and what are the effects of that? And so it was a really long process. We did the membership about twelve months ago. We did that change and it was probably for six months. We just started changing it in our messaging newsletters. All the socials, like everyone knew there was cooling membership so the free people still had free access. All those who show thousand people. Then we decided we're going to send them an email and let them know they're going to have their next six months access.
Mea Campbell [00:36:44]:
There's not going to be any problem. But in six months we will be needing everyone to move over. And so not everyone, we'll be needing to move people over. And so it's been a really staged approach and we're literally just getting to that now of dealing with those 55,000 people. And we're not doing it in a blanket. We're not just saying a blanket email out to everyone saying you blocked, you need to pay suddenly to get access. We're just doing little segments. As you can imagine.
Mea Campbell [00:37:11]:
We have all demographics, all reasons, like there's so many people involved. So we're just doing little groups of people saying we really want you to stay involved, so please move over here. So we're just at that process now, so I'll let you know how that goes in another year maybe to see what percentage of those people moved over. A lot of people actually did it voluntarily. So just actually got in touch and said, oh, I can see you've joined the membership, I'm just going to do it now, just letting you know. So we actually saw that a fair bit. I know we're going to lose people because sometimes when people see something as free, they will never see it as not free. They will never see value in something if they thought it was free once.
Mea Campbell [00:37:47]:
And that's just part of it. And we definitely have gotten the OD email of people being really critical. How can you monetize this? I thought this was something that was so good for the community, but shame on you for taking advantage of it and profiting. And sometimes I feel like, and I may have sent the occasional unfortunately sometimes my legal lawyer brain is just like, I'm going to write you the most comprehensive, clear, and to the point email that shows you why. But you can't do that with everyone. And so you just have to just be really lovely customer service. Unfortunately, it actually wasn't sustainable. And to ensure that we can actually continue to do this for people who need it, we have to make it meet fee based on membership.
Mea Campbell [00:38:25]:
So we have had a tiny bit of backlash. I'm predicting that we'll lose a lot of those original free people. But that's okay, that's okay. You just have to accept that sometimes that's okay. It's just the community. Who's going to come with us now. Whoever it is that joins and comes with us for the ride, she'll be part of it.
Kim Kerton [00:38:40]:
Yeah, those sorts of rhetorics around you're profiting off something, it's so wonderful and yeah, it quite simply comes down to, well, it's either it doesn't happen at all or it's paid for at this stage because, yes, as things grow, they cost more money. Good on you for putting that out there.
Mea Campbell [00:38:57]:
I think people have to remember with anyone who criticizes anything, they're never going to think the way you think. If anyone's going to criticize, they are not the people that listen to reason. And yeah, unfortunately one day someone caught me in a bad caught me. They just shouldn't have emailed at that time. And I saw it come through to the inbox and it's really rude and I actually wrote back personally and was like really clear and I even think I said something along the lines of not in this bad language, but something like who's paid for this so far? Question mark. And then saying, I have personally actually invested the X amount of money to pay for this and it's a lot of money that was actually spent to get this up and running. And they just wrote back, it didn't even listen, didn't even land in their ears. They just wrote back and it was like, well, shame on you and you just shouldn't even engage with them.
Mea Campbell [00:39:41]:
So just delete and move on sometimes there's a lot of people who've done things that were free or movements hashtags there's been drought things and flood things. It's not wrong for you to explain that actually, yes, this is making an impact and we want to keep doing that, but it does cost money and.
Kim Kerton [00:40:01]:
It takes manpower and those people providing that manpower they need to live and be able to pay mortgages and grocery bills and things like that. Yes, absolutely. Unfortunately, the world does not necessarily think in commercial terms when it comes to wonderful services like that. It sounds as though you have been able to, and perhaps this is your previous experience playing a bigger role in what you're doing now than maybe you would have expected. But it seems that you've been able to develop through this process a really wonderful perspective which I think myself and the listener could potentially learn from, which is creating an emotional gap between you and the business or you and the consumer of the business that you've created. Has that been something that you have had to learn to do or do you think that that has come from maybe some of your previous work and education?
Mea Campbell [00:40:57]:
I think it's probably in combination, probably. My background law is very black and white and just very factual. You research it's not a creative industry law. And so I think it's probably a little bit because of that, probably. But also Connect A is literally bigger than me. Most people don't even know who I am. And then also, I think it's also just the way I am as a person. I'm not overly emotional and I really think and solve problems quickly, which is really an impatient trait of mine.
Mea Campbell [00:41:23]:
But sometimes when I hear the girls talking in the office, it's like, no, quick, just do this, don't think about it again. This is your answer. That's it. Whereas most people might really talk about things and think about things quickly. So I think if you just keep reminding yourself and it's not a heart surgery, think what's the quickest way you can do that? What's the simplest answer to that? Let's not create something bigger that it has to be. So I think I've got that natural ability and that has served me well. There's been times along this that's been trying not to be emotionally all in or invested or emotionally reactive to things. There's been some massive disappointments, massive disappointments and would have probably really thrown a lot of people and pleasantly, it just hasn't worried me.
Mea Campbell [00:42:05]:
Coles is a great example. Coles, what about that? Coles was a brand that reached out. Their general manager supermarkets reached out. She'd read about me in country style or something and she said, I'm personally invested in your story, Mea. How can we get involved? Who would love that kind of email anyway? And to be honest with you, she actually emailed a couple of times and I just kept ignoring it because we had a lot of cool brands reaching out and stuff and I didn't really read at all what her email signature was. Eventually I did and I was like, oh, wow, I should really get in touch with her. And so got it back in touch with her and the dream, she was like, this is amazing. We're going to bring like we obviously brainstormed and had all these meetings.
Mea Campbell [00:42:42]:
I'd be on Zooms with like seven of their team and eventually came to this cool project. We were going to bring connection to the community floor in supermarkets, the super mother floor. They were going to build installations, life sized letterboxes outside the Coles supermarkets where people could learn about it, drop in letters. It went so far as them having caps with letterbox, their staff would have little brochures in their pockets and all this stuff. They did like team building exercises with different teams to come up with ideas. Really big thing. They were going to pilot it. It was going to be a two stage process, pilot in Queensland, first in 30 stores and then it was going to be national.
Mea Campbell [00:43:17]:
All this stuff happened. So you can imagine we got to the point where signing contracts and there was going to be money. So again, I had to figure it out. Sorry. And I should have said that. That was at the start of the second year, I thought I had to figure because of this and there was going to be this again, just a sponsorship, though, but they were just going to pay a monetary fee to be our community partner. And I brought in PR people and so I was in my designer and they had all these people. It got to the point where there was mockups.
Mea Campbell [00:43:43]:
They had the full I don't know what the business term is, but literally the little plan and the timeline and everything done. And I got a call one day and so I'd wrapped up bills to pay, like, obviously the PR and design, everything. And I got a call one day, I was at home. I remember my family were over for dinner or something and I got a call and I stepped outside. I saw her number and I stepped outside. She said, Mea, I am so heartbroken to tell you this news. She said, I have just had the funding. I thought I had it approved.
Mea Campbell [00:44:09]:
Everyone, nine other people who had to approve this, eight of them had approved it in writing and one had verbally said, she's on board, but she's just come back today and said it's a no. And I felt for her because she started this whole thing and she was like, I'm so sorry. And then I was trying to for a minute there, I was like, oh, how can we recover from this? But she was just really that's it. And so I remember hanging up the phone, everyone was inside and I literally probably was, I reckon no more than 30 seconds. I just took a deep breath and I was like, oh, that's disappointing. And then I just went inside and thought about it and I literally didn't ever and I even thought about it just to chat to you now. I just didn't let it phase me or get me down. And I just was like, what's next then? So that was disappointing.
Mea Campbell [00:44:52]:
And I was like, what's next? So I feel like if you just constantly have that what's next? Outlook, like, what can you do next? What can you do next? Even if something dreadful happens like that, what can you do next? How can you fix it?
Kim Kerton [00:45:02]:
Oh, I love that. I say this often in this podcast, people come into my world and my remit by unusual means. Usually how we connected was by the wonderful Leah as part of a group. And you should chat to this person, you should meet this person, this all happens. And there's often a little golden nugget I need in something. And I think that golden nugget often lands for the listener too, which is, we will get disappointed over and over and over again. But it is 100% how we take that on board. And we hear that sort of advice often, just get back up, like rack up the rejections.
Kim Kerton [00:45:37]:
But the way you've just crystallized it then is like, great, what's next? I've had a couple of them in the last two weeks myself. Sponsorship deals that haven't gone anywhere, string along for six months and then, oh no, actually we've spent our budget elsewhere.
Mea Campbell [00:45:50]:
Sorry.
Kim Kerton [00:45:50]:
I really like it though. Maybe next year. And you get those knockbacks and when it's something that you've created, it can absolutely throw you completely off kilter. And admittedly it did to me. I had a total breakdown. It's like total meltdown. But hearing the way that you've approached that is like, there will be other opportunities and those opportunities will be right and they will be better. And the business, a business directs you as to where it needs to go.
Kim Kerton [00:46:16]:
You just have to let it happen and respond in some degrees, as scary as it is. So I really love that you've shared that story. And I can learn a lot from you in that space.
Mea Campbell [00:46:25]:
Yeah. And I think the reason you've said people do say that a lot, just get back up, don't worry. Whatever they usually say, that doesn't help because it's often just what's the word? Minimizing. Whatever it was that happened, I didn't ever say to myself, it's not a big deal, Mea. Why? I was just like, that's fucked. But now I'm not going to worry about it anymore. Do you know what I mean? I've never said that wasn't a big deal. That was really disappointing.
Mea Campbell [00:46:48]:
A big deal. But I'm not going to give it any time. I'm just going to move on to the next thing. So I think don't try and minimize things like totally say your sponsorship deal, that's really disappointing, but move on. And I don't think it's necessarily a personality trait. I think you can teach yourself to do that, which is just to teach yourself to accept something, realize it. And I realized, like, she said those words and I was like, that's disappointing. I really realized that's really disappointing.
Mea Campbell [00:47:15]:
And there was probably about 30 seconds, but I genuinely said to myself, that's okay, just what's next? Just move on. And walked inside and didn't say a word to anyone. And that was it. And so I feel like I've been able to do that this whole time and you just have to keep going. And maybe it's different for me because I was forced to keep going. I had so many the pressure of people knowing who I was, and I don't mean the general public, but the Canberra people and all these people, that's me. They're talking to all the different celebrities, that's me. And so I personally had pressure.
Mea Campbell [00:47:44]:
So maybe it was because I was forced to figure this out and I could not let this stop. Whereas if you did, maybe if I had the option, maybe if this was just a little shoe shop downtown, it wasn't working. Probably would have caved. And given up, I'm not sure. But I certainly think resilience is something that's an awesome byproduct of business. You've got to be super resilient and persistent and motivated.
Kim Kerton [00:48:05]:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And as you said, you've had the surprising benefit of it being so public to kind of keep you going. I think how the listener could take that on board is it's perfectly fine to put your goals out there in your own public sphere, no matter how big or small that looks like. I try to get into the practice of sharing my lofty goals on LinkedIn, for example, or one of my business pages on Instagram to say, like, hey, this is what I'm trying to do. I want to write books. I want to do that one day. I want to be on stages. I want to be speaking.
Kim Kerton [00:48:40]:
I want to have a big e comm business. I want to have a big podcast that works with big brands and provides big value to people. And so you put that out there and then you kind of can't help but be resilient because you're like, well, shit, now I've said it. So if I look like a real dickhead, so let's just go for it and go as hard as we can. So I think it's a wonderful lesson to apply for any kind of business.
Mea Campbell [00:49:01]:
And I think what you've just said there is also just about having no fear, not being worried about anything. So a lot of the stuff that has to a lot of it's been passive coming to us organic. But I've also had to put myself out there a lot when the project wanted to do something and different things have happened or reaching out to people. Sam Neal, like, reaching out to different people. I've just not worried. I've just had a crack at it, whether it was just a tiny little thing over here or a massive something that most people like, my husband's often like, oh, my gosh, you just don't worry. As in, you can just get yourself to front up and do something that most people wouldn't be able to do. But it's just because I think in business, you just have to be I know it sounds so stupid, but you just have to be a bit fearless.
Mea Campbell [00:49:43]:
You just have to say to yourself, do it. It's probably very weird that I'm telling this, but I often do talk to myself and say, just do it. For example, this podcast, we're just doing our own very amateur podcast compared to yours, but it's just to give all our communities something lovely in their ears in the lead up to Christmas, which is a really lonely time. And so I had this idea, just catch up over a cuppa and people can listen in, feel like they're catching up. And so some of the people that I've lined up didn't even think it through. I was like, I'm going to bronte Campbell, Mark Hughes, all of these unbelievable people, and I'm just going to email them, line it up, hook it up, it's organized. And then I remember the Bronte Campbell one, I was a little bit like, oh my gosh, got to do that tomorrow. That's actually I'm not a podcaster.
Mea Campbell [00:50:25]:
I've never done this before. She's an Olympian who I really admire, but I honestly just said to myself, just do it, Mea. Don't even think about it, just do it. And I just literally forced myself to do it. And then there's so many wonderful things that come from that. Now we're going to release this really cool podcast and because she did it, then the next person wants to do it and then the next person wants to do it. You just got to force yourself as well sometimes in business.
Kim Kerton [00:50:46]:
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And let's not talk down your podcast in any way, shape or form, because I'm going to have it linked in the show notes. You know how passionate I am about podcast, so the listeners should go and get around it and listen to it because it's going to be great. That's the thing. We just put ourselves out there, we try things, we do things, and they lead to something else, which is just wonderful. So good on you for showing up for yourself. Where do you hope to see your business grow to? And you don't have to project the traditional five year plan.
Kim Kerton [00:51:16]:
What are your hopes and dreams for it right now?
Mea Campbell [00:51:18]:
Well, they're obviously huge, so I'm also quite an ambitious person and that impatient, so I want things to happen fast and big, which is really frustrating as well, sometimes. Amen. Yeah. And everyone does. Like, I'm sure everyone in business wants that, but mine's like this actually like a bit of a feeling of torture. Like, it hurts me when things are slow.
Kim Kerton [00:51:36]:
I really resonate with that feeling. There is no worse.
Mea Campbell [00:51:40]:
No. Obviously the ideal version would be that the membership is suddenly at 100,000 people in the next twelve months, but it's not going to be that. So the actual plan for Connected Au is just to make it just a national name. So similar to lifeline. If someone is at that distressful stage of mental health, they just immediately or anyone around them is just lifeline. That's the help get lifeline. I just kind of want that to be connected at you. So anyone who's lonely, isolated, even, just needs some friendship, just needs anything at all to feel good about themselves, it's just not connected to you.
Mea Campbell [00:52:11]:
Just go over there and we've got the letter box, you got pen pals, all these online clubs, online events. We're doing the podcast, we're going to do some in person events. So connection is just where we want it to go and I want it to be. I do want to have that option to get out only because it is invest it's. Everything. I have had to give everything to make this be what it is today. The last three years, my health's gone, my fitness is gone, my everything, like literally, it's literally just like family connected au. I'm just doing my best in those areas and absolutely exhausted.
Mea Campbell [00:52:44]:
And so I want to be able to sell it in five years. I may never sell it, it may never go anywhere. I love it. But just so I know that I can actually opt out if I need to, if this does become too big. But yeah, that's the goal, is that it becomes really sustainable.
Kim Kerton [00:52:59]:
Amazing goal. And I honestly could talk to you about it all day long. My awareness of how long I have held you on this podcast is very high right now because I have thoroughly loved everything that you have shared. It is such a gift to share the inside and the human side of your business building story with me, with the listener. It's so generous because we're here to help other people and other business owners also grow and thrive through all the shit and the chaos that gets thrown at us as we decide to embark on this mission of working for ourselves. So thank you to you. It's been such a big gift to share. My last question to say thank you to you is how can the listener and I support you to grow? What can we do for you?
Mea Campbell [00:53:40]:
Oh, that's so nice. And I don't know, to be honest, this is the thing I don't know how to. Honestly, my next step is probably getting a bit of a coach or something to help me figure out how do you actually run a business? But I don't know, just follow along. Like, I just like people following along and seeing what we're doing and I love learning about other people's businesses. So I am all for an Instagram, DM or email reach out. I'm super open to any idea. Anyone just has to come to me with an idea and I'm like, oh my God, I love that. Let's do that.
Mea Campbell [00:54:09]:
So if anyone wants to do anything with connected au or if we can help them in any way, just reach out. I love what you're doing. I love this podcast idea. You haven't kept me like I'm a chatty person, obviously, but also I really wanted to do this and tell you all this because just transparency I think is really important and it's all such bullshit at the moment, this Instagram and everything. I can't imagine growing up in this world for young people, but even just now, for ourselves, it's very fake. Obviously, if you dive into the stats about mental health and what it's doing to people, it's also very, very bad for us all. Whilst it's an amazing form of connectivity, it's also bad for us. And I think business is the same.
Mea Campbell [00:54:47]:
I would see all these people kicking goals and I was there trying to be like, oh my God, this thing's going to go broke in the next two weeks if I don't figure out how to and it's not good. It's bad for your self esteem. These people just put forward this image of it's perfect and it's easy and I did that and I could do that. No one probably would remember what I've told them before. I could have jumped on here and said this is how smooth it went. And I'm just such a gun at business. I'm amazing and I'm going to be a business coach soon and then I'm going to release a story telling you all how to do this. I'm not going to do that because it's been really difficult.
Mea Campbell [00:55:18]:
I've failed so many times, done a lot of embarrassing things, didn't know what I was doing and so everyone can do it. It's not something that you have to everyone can do it. And my two things to take away are just really don't be afraid to do anything, to have a go at everything, have a crack at everything. And then the second thing is ask for help, make good friends, talk to people. Just like this podcast. Like I have definitely got a lot of free advice and learned from people just telling me things and I've listened to them and then it's worked for me. So this podcast, that's why I love what you're doing. It's because you are actually giving people the stuff that I probably would have really it really probably would have helped me to listen to these three years ago.
Mea Campbell [00:55:57]:
So I love it and I'll be sharing it for you because I didn't Google business plans or ways to monetize businesses, I didn't do that and I should have sought out free things like free podcasts and free things to help me. So I'll be sharing yours everywhere.
Kim Kerton [00:56:12]:
Thank you. That means the world because we are all here you, me, the listener kindred spirits in less of the bullshit less of here is how I sold out of my product in t -4 minutes and became a seven figure millionaire who sits around and drinks Martini's all day less of those shitty headlines and more of the reality that this is hard. You will have wins. You will have losses. You need resilience. You need patience. You need friends. So yes, I Couldn't Agree any more with that and that's 100% what we're here for and I'm So grateful for your business and for you sharing your Story as well.
Kim Kerton [00:56:47]:
So thank you, it has been a pleasure and if we get this out in time I am going to have the link to your Podcast in my Show Notes as well so that the listener can go and have a listen because I think they'll really enjoy hearing more from you.
Mea Campbell [00:56:58]:
Well, thank you. It's very amateur compared to yours. This has been so I should have really researched the podcast, too, because it was just a chat. Really.
Kim Kerton [00:57:05]:
Hey, that's the best ones. They make the best ones. And you and I could chat all day about it, so maybe we'll make one.
Mea Campbell [00:57:13]:
I love it.
Kim Kerton [00:57:14]:
No, thank you so much, Mea. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today.
Mea Campbell [00:57:17]:
No, pleasure has been all mine. Thank you so much, Kim.