I’ve always known my purpose lives in the creative space.
The work hasn’t been finding it. The work has been being brave enough to do something with it.
The two episodes below will recalibrate how you think about what you’re actually building.
I sat across from Matthew. He’s been in his family business since he was 13. Spent 17 years as an employee before he bought it himself in 2016. He calls that decision the bravest and craziest thing he’s done. He’s built a premium branded merchandise business that sits on people’s desks for years.
I asked him how he thinks about success.
He told me it’s the product that doesn’t end up in the bin. The one that’s still in someone’s hand five years later. Quiet ambassadors, he calls them.
Then I sat across from Vanessa. Workplace psychologist. Twenty plus years inside Fortune 100s, ASX boardrooms, and founder-led businesses. Three books to her name. One of the most credentialled people you’ll ever meet.
I asked her about purpose.
She told me most people have never actually done the work to find theirs. They’ve taken what was expected. Built lives that look right from the outside and feel hollow from the inside.
Here’s what I’m sitting with.
I think purpose is something you’re born with. Something you get drawn back to time and time again, no matter how much you try to avoid it. Something you’d keep doing even if nobody paid you, because it fills your soul that much.
You don’t invent it. You discover it. Then you have to be brave enough to do something with it.
For me, that work has two halves. The conversations I have with founders inside the podcast studio. And Design Studio Perth, helping business owners and creatives come out of the shadows and be seen for their true potential through brand.
Both come down to the same thing. Helping people see what they already are.
What is the thing you keep getting drawn back to, no matter how much you try to avoid it?
That’s where to look.
One will change how you think about your brand. The other will change how you think about your purpose. Matt first.
EPISODE 135: Matthew Cody
With Matthew Cody, Owner of Cody Group, premium branded merchandise that ends up on desks, not in bins
Matthew was 13 the first time he worked in his family’s warehouse. He spent the next 17 years inside the business as an employee before he bought it himself in 2016. What he built next is a different kind of business entirely.
What you’ll take away:
- Why he thinks of merchandise as a five-year brand investment, not a one-day promotional spend
- The decision to reposition as a premium business and what it cost him to do it
- The loneliness of the first years without a business advisor (and what he wishes someone had told him sooner)
EPISODE 136: Vanessa Vershaw
With Vanessa Vershaw, Founder and MD of Vanessa Vershaw Group, workplace psychologist and author of three books including Unreasonable Ambition and The Sisterhood Paradox
Vanessa has spent over twenty years helping people unlock who they actually are. Inside Fortune 100 companies. Inside ASX boardrooms. Inside founder-led businesses across the world. And quietly, behind closed doors, doing the same work on herself.
What you’ll take away:
- The difference between ambition that elevates and ambition that quietly destroys
- Why most people have never actually done the work to find their purpose, and where to start
- The story she told me about her great-grandmother and a man at a bus stop that I’m still thinking about
