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Ever wondered what goes on behind closed doors in Parliament House? Former political staffer Sean Sammon shares his experience of the riding political roller coaster that was the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government and how he got out alive.   Links to some of the things Sean touched on: “That handshake” - watch the moment former Labor Opposition Leader lost the 2004 Australian Federal Election campaign to then-Prime Minister John Howard here. Who the hell is Joh Bjelke-Peterson? For those of you who were there, a refresher. For those of you who don’t have a clue, strap yourselves in, it’s a killer of a political story. While Sean was working away as a staffer for Labor rising stars Mark Arbib and Kate Lundy, Australia experienced the removal of not one but two sitting prime ministers - Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. The ABC’s Adele Ferguson captured all the gory details in the seminal documentary The Killing Season. Watch and learn. Some of the political characters Sean mentioned: Bill Shorten MP, Federal Opposition Leader Bridget Whelan, former Chief of Staff to Mark Arbib Allison Hill, former media adviser to Mark Arbib Susan Templeman MP Some of the political shows mentioned: House of Cards Veep Yes Minister Former political speechwriter to Julia Gillard, Michael Cooney’s book The Gillard Project: My Thousand Days of Despair and Hope, explores the different types of political staffers refers to in our podcast. Guardian Australia journalist Katherine Murphy wrote an essay for Meanjin: A Political Life Is No Life At All on the life and times of Greg Combet, Minister for Climate Change, Industry and Innovation in the Second Gillard Ministry. You can email us at hello@bastioncollective.com To rate, download and subscribe to Life Collective, jump onto iTunes and  catch new episodes and hear more interesting conversations we’re having about life and stuff.

Sometimes by necessity and other times by design, we're forced to reinvent our sense of belonging. Today on Life Collective Michelle Cox talks to Tara Phelps, Alice Eastman and Eleanore Testa, three young women who have embarked on adventures from a young age that have redefined what community and belonging means to them. Links to some of the things Alice, Eleanor and Tara touched on: Every kid’s worst nightmare? Moving to a new school and having no friends. No one wants that. Alice mentioned the scene from the movie Mean Girls where the Lindsay Lohan character is so ostracised she locks herself in the toilet cubicle and eats her lunch alone...poor love. Tara’s experience of boarding was like a scene out of Summer Heights High where private school girl Ja’mie lorded it over the state schooler much like her experience at school where the day girls considered themselves a cut above the daggy boarders from out bush. Ouch. Eleanore and Alice both mentioned using Flatmate Finders to find homes and people to live with when they moved states and cities. While not every experience ends up with you finding your new family like Eleanore did, you might very well meet new people that could change your life. Can you handle the truth? Keep track of the amount of time you spend on your phone with Moment - an app designed to help you get your life back. *gulp* Tara mentioned an article that she read about Google and/or Amazon creating new villages for their employees and providing accommodation for staff that can’t afford to live in these places like baristas etc Another mention of Ferg work/life balance article - I can’t find it - can you insert it here? You can email us at hello@bastioncollective.com To rate, download and subscribe to Life Collective, jump onto iTunes and  catch new episodes and hear more interesting conversations we’re having about life and stuff.

In Part 2 of our wide-ranging chat with Hayley Baillie, luxury tourism operator and Tourism Australia board member, Life Collective’s Michelle Cox explores Hayley’s deep-seated commitment to supporting Indigenous Australian artists and her love of environmental conservancy. Where did it all start for Hayley Baillie? Links to some of the things Hayley touched on: Hayley is one of the founding patrons of the Australian Red Cross Society of Women Leaders Tiffany Circle. More about the giving circle and the good works they do with local communities here. Dick Smith was a proud Scout. Read more about Dick’s career with the Scouts here. And check out Scouts Australia to find out more about the movement. Dick talks about the Dick & Pip Smith Foundation in a long-ranging interview with Radio National’s Rachel Kohn on The Spirit of Things program. Longitude 131°, the Baillie Lodge in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, has forged close ties with local indigenous communities and artist. Established in 1948, Ernabella Arts is the oldest, continuously running indigenous arts centre in Australia. More about the Ernabella Arts studio here. You can email us at hello@bastioncollective.com To rate, download and subscribe to Life Collective, jump onto iTunes and  catch new episodes and hear more interesting conversations we’re having about life and stuff.

In Part 1 of our conversation with Hayley Baillie, Life Collective’s Michelle Cox explores Hayley’s growing-up years with her dad, Australian adventurer and entrepreneur, Dick Smith, and the impact it’s had on Hayley’s career choices, the luxury tourism business she’s built with her husband, and the way she’s raising her four young sons. Links to some of the things Hayley touched on: Hayley’s dad is Dick Smith - that’s right, the Dick Smith - Australian entrepreneur, adventurer, aviator, philanthropist and political activist. Hayley and her husband James Baillie founded Baillie Lodges in 2003, a portfolio of boutique lodges in some of Australia’s most pristine locations - tropical island paradises, outback adventures and southern ocean coastal escapes. Hayley was appointed to the Board of Tourism Australia in November 2015. Check out Hayley’s Instagram account but try to stifle your insta-envy - her life in pictures is AMAZING! This is what Hayley’s talking about - cruising the Arctic Northeast Passage in a Russian icebreaker - epic! One of Hayley’s mentors is Valerie Taylor, the underwater conservationist. Valerie along with her husband Ron Taylor, shark expert and cinematographer, did much to rehabilitate the reputation of sharks and preserve them and their underwater environments from over-fishing, culling and extinction. Keen for the luxury lodge experience? Here’s some more info on the lodges Hayley talks about in Part 1. On July 22, 1983, entrepreneur and founder of Australian Geographic Dick Smith completed his first solo around-the-world helicopter flight. All the deets here. Part 2 of our conversation with Hayley Baillie goes live on Monday, 27 November 2017. You can email us at hello@bastioncollective.com To rate, download and subscribe to Life Collective, jump onto iTunes and  catch new episodes and hear more interesting conversations we’re having about life and stuff.

Are you born creative or is it a skill you can cultivate? Life Collective’s Michelle Cox taps three creative types, Jim Ritchie, Tom Meredith and James Hyde, and finds out how they get in the zone. Links to some of the things Jim, Tom and James touched on: Learn about the life of Dr Edward de Bono, the inventor of lateral thinking, his books, his ideas and the courses that can improve the way you think by training your brain for success here. More on Dr de Bono’s Six Hats system, a parallel thinking process that helps people be more productive, focused, and mindfully involved here. Ideation isn’t just a buzzword - it’s about employing curiosity, empathy and understanding to come up with ideas to solve a problem or brief. Here are some techniques to get your next ideation session going. Some tools the team uses: Mind mapping Research is crucial like keeping up with who is doing industry-best work: Industry blogs and websites Industry awards websites Site like Brand New blog Listening to music Always carrying a notepad and pen Taking a different route to work or home Do advertising creatives rehash the same old tropes? If so, that’s because there are only seven basic types of stories. But it’s how you tell the story that makes it stick. That’s where creativity and innovation lies. Here’s what Adweek has to say on the matter. Jim quoted pre-WWII American ad man James Webb Young on the characteristics of a creative person: “Every really good creative person in advertising has always had two noticeable characteristics. First, there was no subject he could not easily get interested in...Second, he was an extensive browser in all sorts of fields of information. For it is with the advertising man as with the cow: no browsing, no milk.” More Webb Young quotes here. Can’t get enough of James Webb Young? He wrote the A Technique for Producing Ideas in 1939, a five-step process for producing ideas. Almost 30 years after advertising doyen Sir John Hegarty spotted the line "Vorsprung durch Technik" at an Audi factory and made it a globally recognised ad slogan, the car manufacturer has won a long legal battle to take full control of it as a trademark. Full story here. Hegarty’s BBH London brand platform for Audi spawned some fantastic ads. Read the origin story here. Watch Jim’s favourite Audi ad here. According to research procrastinating can boost your creativity. Phew! Leonardo Da Vinci was a famous procrastinator. He finished the Mona Lisa in 1517 despite having started it in 1503. Curious about the daily routines of geniuses? The Harvard Business review is one step ahead of you - read more here. Apparently all great minds don’t think alike - check out this comparative analysis of creative geniuses from Mozart to Dickens and Murakami to Picasso. Who do you find inspirational in the creative sense? For Tom it’s: Musicians and songwriters like Alex Turner and Noel Gallagher Paul Scholes soccer genius Advertising creative titan David Droga of Droga 5 fame For Jim it’s all about the creative output, “the work” - and Einstein’s quotes, lots of fabulous Einstein quotes, like this one: “Stay away from negative people. They have a problem for every solution.” More Einstein quotes. For James his heroes in the creative space are: Famous designers like Michael Bierut of Pentagram and Sal Bass touted as the best designer of the 20th Century.   Australian Cricket Captain Steven Smith for his creative setting of the field. You can email us at hello@bastioncollective.com To rate, download and subscribe to Life Collective, jump onto iTunes and  catch new episodes and hear more interesting conversations we’re having about life and stuff.

If you’ve been lucky enough to be born in Australia, it’s pretty likely that your parents or your grandparents weren’t. That’s what makes this country a diverse, inclusive and bloody fantastic place to live. Today on Life Collective Michelle Cox chats with Brenda Younes, Dean Norbiato and Raffaele D’Alisa about what it was like growing up as the children of migrants in the 'lucky country'. Links to some of the things Brenda, Dean and Raff touched on: Raff’s folks come from Palermo and Napoli in Italy Raff’s dad Luca D’Alisa has been tailoring in Double Bay for decades - apparently he’s got all the business he can handle at the moment but you can always pop in and say hello. Raff recently went to New York and marvelled at the celebration of all things Italian food and wine at Eataly New York...yum! Brenda’s mum and dad fled the Lebanese civil war and strife when they eloped as a young couple to Australia. Doesn’t stop her folks being inordinately proud of their Lebanese language and culture. Brenda’s mum will tell anyone who cares to listens that she comes from the same village as famed poet and prophet Khalil Gibran - Bsharri for the record. Looks amazing Bren. Ring a bell? Gibran’s famous poem On Marriage has become an almost mandatory reading at all weddings! Dean’s people hail from the region of Treviso in northern Italy. While he’s never been to Italy, Dean plans to take advantage of Bastion Collective’s unlimited leave policy when he wracks up three years of service next northern summer and make the pilgrimage back with his mum and dad. Employees at Bastion Collective can apply to do the Bastion Degree. It's an intense six-month course that teaches you about... you. It has literally transformed and changed lives. To do the course, you need to work for Bastion. Maybe one of these roles could be for you. All the details here. Bastion Bridge is the Collective's intern program, giving students and recent graduates an immersive and supportive introduction to the working world. Join us. Yes, Australia is a successful multicultural country...but there’s still work to do. Dean cited the Australia Day 2017 furore when a billboard featuring a young Muslim Aussie gal wearing her headscarf as part of Australia Day promotional activities was taken down due to protests from some quarters. Read the full sorry story here. Who are you calling a wog? While the sting might have gone out of the word, the crew talked about how once upon a time it was part of common parlance and was used to divide and hurt. Ted Bullpit, the chief provocateur of mid-80’s sitcom Kingswood Country would routinely call his son-in-law Bruno the ‘bloody wog’. Comedians like Nick Giannopolous reclaimed the word for the wogs and went on to create theatre, TV and movies that celebrated and elevated the state of being a wog from social outsider to mainstream hero Theatre - Wogs Out of Work. Watch some of it here. TV - Acropolis now Movies - The Wog Boy and others You can email us at hello@bastioncollective.com To rate, download and subscribe to Life Collective, jump onto iTunes and  catch new episodes and hear more interesting conversations we’re having about life and stuff.

This time round on Life Collective Michelle Cox talks to three women at different stages of their careers and their family life. Hannah Warren is just about to have her first baby. And Louise Egan and Tabitha Lucas have two boys a piece and are deep in the weeds of juggling work and career. Can you be a great mum in today’s yummy-mummy culture and have a stellar career at the same time, without going cray-cray?   Links to some of the things Hannah, Lou and Tab touched on: Bastion Collective founder Fergus Watts on work/life balance and what it means to him. The Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Line is a statewide telephone service available every day of the year for​​ Victorian families with children from birth to school age. Maternal and child health nurses can provide information, support and guidance regarding a range of issues including child health, nutrition, breastfeeding, maternal and family health and parenting. More info here. Jacinda Arden, New Zealand’s new Labour party leader was out on the husting on day one of the 2017 election campaign and straight out of the gate she was asked about her plans for motherhood and how that would impact on her ability to lead the country if she became the next prime minister (she was unsuccessful). Do you think that’s a fair question? Background briefing here. Bastion policies on flexible work arrangements support mothers, fathers and families to work and play in today’s demanding world. You can email us at hello@bastioncollective.com To rate, download and subscribe to Life Collective, jump onto iTunes and  catch new episodes and hear more interesting conversations we’re having about life and stuff.

Looking to go on a board and don’t know where to start? Today Life Collective’s Michelle Cox talks to seasoned business leaders and board aficionados -  David Sawicki and Michael Brown – for the inside goss on and what happens around the board table and tips on how to get on one. Links to some of the things Michael and David touched on: Michael Brown’s career history on LinkedIn. David Sawicki’s career history on Linkedin. Find out more about David’s company, Third Wave Ideas here Do you know the difference between a management committee, an advisory board and a board of directors? Knowing which is which could save you a lot of time and trouble - get the low-down here Thinking about joining a board? There are courses you can do and groups you can join to learn more about your responsibilities as a board member and start your networking journey. Australian Institute of Company Directors - Courses for Directors   INSEAD is a graduate business school with campuses in Europe (Fontainebleau, France), Asia (Singapore), and the Middle East (Abu Dhabi) - Training for Board Members Board warriors you don’t read about Kevin McCann Brian Schwarz Would you want Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian, on your board - the resound answer was yes! Check out his creds here (scroll down and click on Mike’s bob-head doll’s head!)   Michelle is a member of the Tourism Tasmania Board of Directors You can email us at hello@bastioncollective.com To rate, download and subscribe to Life Collective, jump onto iTunes and  catch new episodes and hear more interesting conversations we’re having about life and stuff.

Ever heard of a festival in honour of all things unicorn? If you’re a Millennial you probably know all about it. On behalf of the rest of us, Life Collective’s Michelle Cox goes in search of the mythical creature and this year’s biggest social media trend: unicorns. For answers she turned to Melissa Polglase, Melbourne Central’s marketing manager, who tapped into 2017’s biggest social trend to create the shopping centre’s most successful event ever. Like, totes amazeballs!

This time round Life Collective’s Kristen Boschma has visual designers Tom, Georgia and Heather in her crosshairs. Together they explore the art of visual storytelling; are  today’s designers just a bunch of appropriators who recycle the same old tropes or commercially savvy practitioners who use design practices, principles and theories to create audience-sensitive messages that sell, sell, sell?

Michelle Cox asks three very different people what their definition of success is and got three very different perspectives. Nick Smith, Catherine Parker and Adam Zammit chew over the binary nature of success and failure: are they mutually exclusive states of being or just different aspects of the same thing? You be the judge.

Is a good reputation your right or your responsibility? And if something goes wrong how easy is it to get back into everyone’s good books? Kristen Boschma talks about balancing commercial realities with kindness and empathy with Bastion Reputation Management Founder and CEO Brian Walsh and his colleagues-in-arms Anna Butler and Heidi Wearne.

Is workplace culture all about the lurks and perks, bean bags and sleeping pods, or does it go deeper than that? Life Collective’s Michelle Cox talks culture, work-life balance and dogs at work with Edwina Webb, Head of People + Process at Bastion Collective. 

China specialists Doris Li, Tom Parker  and Jennifer Connelly are back to help us navigate the complexities of Chinese culture and business practices. They help us separate our hóngbāo from our guanxi - these and other pearls of wisdom could spell the difference between the success and failure of your China adventures.

If you’ve contemplated doing business in China but haven’t made the great leap forward 'cause you think it’s a dangerous, unregulated market with impenetrable customs that could land you in trouble, worry no more. Life Collective’s China specialists and myth busters - Doris Li, Tom Parker and Jennifer Connelly - dispel the many misconceptions that have cemented China’s reputation for being a tough place to make a buck.

It’s hard to sum up Adam Blake, brand guru and design expert, in one glib sentence. A hippy upbringing in the Sydney bush taught him how to be a gracious host. A stint as a Steiner teacher introduced him to the magic of storytelling. And his time as a social policy researcher inspired him to jump the fence and co-found social ventures instead of just writing about them. All along, love has been the continuous thread connecting Adam’s career incarnations and brought him finally to iconic Aussie boot brand Blundstone where he sculpts the now-global brand. Adam’s philosophy on life, love and design and how they intersect make him one of the best in the biz. The proof is in the boots.

Life Collective’s Kristen Boschma catches up with Vanessa Condemi, Clare Pearce and David Parr - three so-called "lazy Millennials" who debunk the generation's bratty rep - and finds out what it takes to catch a freakin’ break in today’s job market.

From retiring after 11 years as an AFL player and starting his first 'real job' at 30; to moving on from what was a passion project rather than a job as Western Bulldogs CEO - Simon Garlick reckons he knows a few things about confronting significant change and challenge and moving on. Given his incredible journey, Michelle Cox asks Simon: what are you so happy about?

Growing a family takes commitment. Commitment to walking through the door at night and leaving work behind. Commitment to making the time that you have with your kids meaningful. And recognising that while life is a juggle for adults who work and run families, life can also be tough for our kids as they navigate the internet, teen suicide, porn and mobile devices. Richard Chapman and Marteen Burger are back in conversation with Michelle Cox about what it takes to grow a family these days.

If content is king, Bastion Collective’s Richard Chapman and Marteen Burger are the high priest and priestess of digital storytelling. Their working partnership has spawned campaigns that have transcended the medium and helped Australian brands turn their stories into digital content that connects. Richard and Marteen explore what makes a great digital campaign and who is doing the best work.