Feature Story
Over tens of thousands of years, message sticks were commonly used by our ancestors as one means of communicating between different Aboriginal tribes/nations. Messages were painted and inscribed on a stick, which was then transported by hand. One who carried the message stick was traditionally granted safe and protected entry to other nation's territory - a sort of visa or passport. Enter MesaageStick - a multiplatform telecommunications company challenging, well, communications.
Tell us about your personal journey as a business leader and how you came to be in your current role:
To share about my life, I would say my life is the ‘micro’ perspective and ‘Message Stick’ my business is the macro – the bigger life picture. But just to give you some idea of the micro and how it led to the macro, I’ll start from the beginning. I’m one of six kids and was taken away from my family when I was 12 months old. We all got taken away. My life was spent in and out of foster homes in NSW and at the tender age of 10 I had my first experience of hard drugs and alcohol and it got worse as the years went by. At age 25 I was a full on heroin addict and around the same time, I became homeless and derelict in Sydney. After nearly seven years living that way, I was introduced to a detox program, which led to short and long term rehab. I was one of the lucky ones.
During this time, I spent numerous years back on the streets, you know, doing more ‘research’ and in all it took about six years before I finally made the decision to stop drugs completely and change my life.
I actually had an epiphany of sorts. It happened when someone asked me how I had got myself locked into substance abuse and that’s when it dawned on me, it was welfare dependency. It was the dole, funding, government grants, anything associated with ‘sit down money’ and it was in that moment I didn’t want to be beholden to anyone for my existence. So I started my own company. Australia’s first Internet Service Provider.
I didn’t actually know much about IT but I could see that it was going to be a big thing. Some good people around me at the time told me, “you know Michael, you’re going to have to learn a thing or two about IT to start this business” and the funny thing was, at that stage, I was just trying to stay clean and sober.
So the business ran for six years and it failed. I had no business skills, no cash flow and lived on and off the streets during that time but the thing that kept me going was my passion. In hindsight, I’d not experienced that before. When I was younger I’d never had dreams for the future, I’d never thought about what my aspirations were. When I got sober that changed. I had big dreams so it didn’t matter that I failed. It actually led me to be far stauncher in succeeding in business. Those six years were the most empowering of my entire life.
IN going forward, I realised I needed to reach out to the business sector for some help. Serendipity led me to Dugald Russell, my now business partner of 12 years. He joined forces with me back then, helped skill me up and mentored me in a way that really changed my life.
We’ve built the company together since then and now make $10 million in annual revenue. We didn’t trade in the first few years; we just researched and built a network. The year we opened for trading, 10 of Australia’s top corporates came on board. I will say, in that year I changed from poverty and struggle to a life of being comfortable. It was unreal.
Importantly, as I became more comfortable, the more guilt I felt. Wondering what I was doing for my community, and then one day, I got a kick up the arse from an elder who said, “why can’t you enjoy what white fellas enjoy and why can’t you enjoy your hard work just for yourself? You will give back you don’t have to feel guilty for being successful.”
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"My business is based on my life. My journey in life”
Meet Message Stick's Michael McLeod