Let’s face it Lisa Messenger, Australia’s favourite entrepreneur and creator of the fabulous international magazine, The Renegade Collective, did start out with one amazing advantage for someone starting a communications company. Her name. Messenger, the internet tells me, comes from Middle English and Old French, it dates back to William the Conqueror, and literally means ‘a carrier of messages.’

In a sense, this is what the redoubtable Messenger has been doing for many years, first as a marketing and sponsorship manager, raising funds and support for both her products and for other people, and more recently as a publisher, not just of Renegade Collective but also of several books, including her most recent one, Life and Love, to be launched on February 14 in Byron Bay, at those wonderful purveyors of fine food, the 100 Mile Table.

The message, as you can imagine from the title alone, is of course a positive one. Messenger comes bearing us the ultimate gift – the secret of life – that we have it in us to create our own destinies, that we can live fulfilled, abundant, happy lives, and be cool, calm and centered in the midst of all our challenges.

The book came to her, as many of her ideas do, as a complete entity, but even she was surprised at the speed with which it followed her earlier book, Daring and Disruptive: Unleashing the Entrepreneur – a kind of over-turn everything you know business manual for creative entrepreneurs. “We’d only just completed Daring and Disruptive,” Messenger says, “and, as you are at the end of a project I was pretty much depleted. I’d even thought to myself that the book would come out, and I would go back to concentrating on business, but my imagination had other ideas. It was quite late on a Friday night, I remember, and I just suddenly had this visualization. I saw Life and Love – even its table of contents, almost exactly how it is now, and I knew I had to do it.”

It’s that kind of counter-intuitive, commando-style, boots and all thinking that has got Messenger where she is today. She did, she says, “veggie English at school. It was basically the lowest of the low for people who couldn’t write or spell. Now I’m proud to say that I’ve made a life out of writing books – I’ve written 13 myself and co-authored, contributed or custom published numerous others.”

But it was her first book which was the most important for her on her journey towards finding her purpose in life. She is open about the dark days that preceded her breakthrough. “I was stuck in an unhappy marriage,” she says. “I was alienated from my family, drinking too much and I’d spent ten years of my life largely isolating myself. Even though I was married I’d never felt more alone. It was hard to see how I was going to get out of the hole I’d dug for myself.”

In her blog on Life and Love Messenger writes: I had made the conscious decision to cut all ties with my mother – a decision I thought would empower me but only served as a domino effect to alienate myself from the rest of my family. Our struggles began when my parents divorced and over time the tension grew to toxic levels. I remember when I married my first husband – my ex-husband – instead of coming to my wedding, my mum and sister walked the Inca Trail. I can’t blame them. A mountain goat would have been better company than me at that point.

But something was brewing. She decided she wanted to know what happiness was – what made people happy, and how they find happiness, so in 2004 she set off around Australia interviewing people what made them happy, culminating in the book, Happiness Is…The book sold 36,000 copies in its first 12 months, which is phenomenal for an Australian author. People asked her to publish their books, and there it was – an industry was born. The Messenger Group has become a brand engagement agency specializing in custom publishing, and utilizing books and magazines as an extension of brand awareness. Eleven years and countless books later, Messenger is here to tell us that we can do create the life we love, and without compromising ourselves.

If there is a journey between Daring and Disruptive and Life and Love, it seems to me to be a journey from the head to the heart. If the earlier book was a kind of kick-ass book, this is the reverse – a gentle, reflective, beautiful book. A feminine book, if you will. “I think that’s right,” Messenger says. “I think Daring and Disruptive and another previous book, Cubicle Commando, which was all about being an ‘intrapreneur’, that is someone working from within a corporation, were both ‘yang’ energy, and with Life and Love, I was seeking my own balanceto that. I think I had a need to do something more ‘yin’, something softer and more organic.”

Ryan Gosling was the first male to make it on to the cover of Renegade Collective.

Despite the stunning success of Renegade Collective which is now sold in 37 countries, and her Collective hub, which runs the spin-offs from the magazine, plus her other 13-odd companies, Messenger remains a hippy at heart, which is what brings her back to the Byron Shire for her rest and recreation. Having reconciled with her family some years ago, Messenger’s mother and her sister live respectively in and near Bangalow, and Messenger owns a house in Bangalow herself. “I love it up there,” she says. “It’s my feel-good place. I get away up there as often as I can.”

There’s a sweet synchronicity to launching Life and Love on Valentine’s Day. It took Messenger some years to find love again after the end of her first marriage, but in November she got engaged to her partner Jack Delosa, an entrepreneurial educator she met on stage during a speaking gig. “We were on a five-gig tour together,” she says. “On the third gig he asked me out to dinner, and the rest is history.” They share their lives with Bennie, a Cavoodle, who doesn’t leave Lisa’s side – and of course, if you run your own creative entrepreneur business you can take your dog to work!

The idea that print is dead or dying, has been around for some years since the internet began its inevitable encroachment on sales, but a bit like the ‘death of the author’, or the supposed demise of film to dvd, reprorts of the death of print, to paraphrase Mark Twain, have been greatly exaggerated. What has been proved by Messenger, and other brave do-it-differently publishers is that what was wanted was something fresh and different. “When I launched the Collective the idea behind it was being a business magazine for entrepreneurs,” she says, “but I didn’t want it to look like a business magazine. I wanted it to look like a fashion magazine, I wanted it to be gorgeous and and have a feeling for who I am, to morph between traditional business, fashion and design.” For those of us who soaked up her first issue, full of admiration for the tactile feel of a magazine full of handwriting across photos, collage and beautiful artwork intermingled with entrepreneurial derring do, it was irresistible – and cross-generational I might add in our house where it is compulsive reading for both me and my 23-year-old son. (Our two must reads? Renegade Collective and Horse Deals…)

Ignoring the dire prophecies of print death has stood Messenger in good stead. Richard Branson now puts a copy in every room on his exclusive Necker Island resort, and the U.S sales are booming. Messenger recently spend four days with Branson on the island, and was on the alert for insights. “I really noticed that of course Richard, as with other high-profile achievers is, of course, just an ordinary person, but entrepreneurs have this propensity for risk, and an ability to trust their own decision-making process.”

Branson has often said in interviews that when it comes to business decisions his final decision is based on intuition rather than logic, and Messenger concurs. “I’ve very counter-intuitive,” she says. “As well as being a hippy at heart, I’m really tuned into the idea that there is flow of energy – something higher than us, and that is where gut knowledge and intuition come from. It’s totally different to how most businesses are run, but I think we are seeing more of it in action – it’s conscious capitalism I guess.” That said, though, she is also a believer in what she has referred to as ‘fast failure’. “Not everything is going to succeed if you’re an entrepreneur,” she says. “I’ve honed it down to a fine art – put it all together, if it doesn’t fly, walk away.”

Even further back than Medieval French or Old English, messenger in archaic Hebrew was the name ‘Malakhiy’ – meaning ‘My Messenger’ or ‘My Angel’, definitions which seem only fitting for someone who is truly delivering a message of self-fulfilment.

Paper Runway are hosting a cocktail party for Lisa Messenger  on  February14 (Valentine’s Day) to launch the serial entrepreneur’s book Life and Love, sequel to her best selling book Daring & Disruptive.  There will be wines from  Burch Family Wines and the style-makers from The Canavan will be there to shake + stir cocktails from their 1960’s retro-styled caravan. The cocktail party will be held at Byron Bay’s hippest eatery – 100 Mile Table. With five years experience as Neil Perry’s right hand person, Sarah Swan relocated north to open 100 Mile Table and will be indulging guests with paddock-to-plate canapés.

What’s included –
Canapés
Wine
Cocktails
A signed copy of Life and Love
Treats from Paper Runway

Cost $150

Where – 100 Mile Table 4/8 Banksia Drive Byron Bay

Bookings – paperrunway.com

The post Lisa Messenger on life, love and daring to be different appeared first on .

Robert Drewe ponders the ‘Poor’ epithet

Robert Drewe, whose new book, Swimming to the Moon, is out this week,  has learned rather more about ‘Poor’ Jennifer from his doctors’ waiting rooms, than he ever imagined possible.

If it weren’t for the doctor, dentist and physiotherapist I would never have learned about the intense and complicated lives of Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Poor Jennifer Aniston.

I owe their waiting-room magazines a great deal for introducing me to these significant, multi-talented and world-famous people. Thanks to a troublesome knee cartilage, tennis elbow and wisdom tooth I’ve learned much about their romances (many and exotic), best-friend feuds (lots), diets (constant), hobbies (nightclubbing) and fashion sense (skimpy).

I’ve learned a vast amount about their sex lives (vigorous), their technical skill at filming their relationships for posterity (patchy), their addictions (where to start?) and their choice of rehabilitation clinics (somewhere pleasant).

I know which nightclubs they like to depart from in a dishevelled state in the early morning, and with whom. I’ve learned they have bodyguards at such times to place them into cars and punch photographers. I know about their arrests, court appearances and token imprisonments. I know when the waiting-room magazine editors consider they’ve let themselves go, whether they’re “Still Hot?” or “Given Up On Love?” I’ve even been visually informed as to their tendency to shun underwear.

In mentioning the colourful lifestyles of the above internationally celebrated women, I remind myself that they must be extraordinarily gifted or their existence wouldn’t be so constantly celebrated. And of course I exclude from that list of shenanigans Poor Jennifer Aniston, for whom the waiting-room magazines have nothing but constant sympathy.

For what reason, beyond merely modest talent, looks and film success, I’m not sure, but “Poor Jen”, as she’s always described, must have suffered an ongoing loss so tragic that it overwhelms her personal wealth, apparent good health and pleasant-enough appearance.

In her wretched state – regularly confirmed for the magazines by her sometimes undergoing haircuts — she was joined for a time by Poor Katie Holmes (Tom Cruise’s ex) and, further back, by Poor Nicole Kidman (Tom Cruise’s ex), but the waiting-room magazines decided that, unlike Poor Jen’s, their tragic lives had a definite time limit and had run their course.

There are more waiting-room magazine regulars of course, like the Beckhams, a mysterious duo that the mags seem unsure whether to pan or praise, and those other Royals, William and Catherine and cheeky Harry. Plus JLO and Brangelina, as I’ve come to familiarly know them, and Beyonce, and a string of lesser Kardashians.

“As the doctor I see for skin cancer check-ups offers only surfing magazines, I presume he’s encouraging me me out into the sunshine…”

Clearly the magazine industry can’t get enough Kardashians. Like other distinguished families, such as the Kennedys, the Redgraves, the Barrymores and the Rothschilds, the whole Kardashian family is wreathed in fame and good taste, and the sooner Kim’s baby, North West, is old enough to go nightclubbing with Miley Cyrus, or film a bedroom tape with Prince George, the better.

Unfortunately some waiting-rooms let the side down. Waiting in a hospital ante-room for a knee arthroscopy, I was surprised to pick up the only reading matter, a tattered Woman’s Day, and discover that Lleyton Hewitt had just married Bec Cartwright from Home and Away, and that Tom Wants Nicole Back. Similarly, while I realise that The Life of Tutankhamun and The Wonders of Belize never really age, has anyone ever read a waiting-room’s National Geographic that was published more recently than 1998?

From his piles of magazines extolling the joys of skiing and extreme sports, I can only imagine my knee surgeon is trawling for custom. And as the doctor I see for skin cancer check-ups offers only Tracks and Carve, surfing magazines, I presume he’s encouraging me out into the sunshine every day.

But for one-track reading matter you can’t go past the waiting-room offerings at any business to do with cars. At the garage, it’s car magazines, pure and simple. Just having your tyres changed? Then you’ll be wanting to read about cars – much better, faster cars than yours, of course. You’re a man? Unless you’re a sook you should only want to read about cars. You’re a woman? Bad luck, it’s time you got stuck into Muscle Car, Wheels and Top Gear.

However, it’s the specialist surgeons who really rub it in. From the magazines they provide — Exotic Cars, Luxury Yacht Magazine, Luxury Travel, Gourmet Traveller and Country Living — you get the message. If these are those chaps’ avid interests, guess what sort of bill you can expect?

Robert Drewe’s Swimming to the Moon is published by Fremantle Press: fremantlepress

The post The world of waiting room magazines appeared first on .