The Power of One: month: Michael speaks with entrepreneur Luke “Cookie” Cook. Together Michael and Luke discuss the challenges Luke faced with his previous business, FUNLOCKA, and how the ending of that business put him on to road to helping thousands of others through his new venture Cuppa.tv. Luke speaks candidly about his own mental health and the importance of wellbeing – an important lesson we can all learn.
We hope you enjoy Luke’s story.
About Luke Cook
Luke Cook is the founder of Cuppa.tv. As host, his role is to help businesses and the community to stay positive and inspired through conversations, masterclasses, experiences, content and courses. Luke has created hundreds of virtual events over the last twelve months, helping tens of thousands of people globally through his content. Luke has interviewed hundreds of people from all walks of like through his company. The idea – that one meaningful conversation can shift the direction of change in who we are, how we act and also how we understand the world around us
Contact Luke: cookie@cuppa.tv
Website: https://cuppa.tv/
Transcript
Note: This has been automatically transcribed so is likely to have errors! It may however help you navigate the points of interests for you.
The Power of One:
Michael McGrath: Hi, welcome to the Troubleshooters Podcast with me your host Mike McGrath. Now, today’s guest Luke Cook, after a stellar early career in radio marketing and then sales, burned himself out. He then started his own technology business in events, only to have it fail in early COVID. Having invested in lost everything he had, he asked himself a simple question, how can I help people feeling like I do? The answer that question spawned a highly successful business, which he now runs called Cuppa.TV. This is an inspiring comeback story with a genuine Troubleshooter. So, Luke Cook. Welcome to the Troubleshooters Podcast. Great to have you with us.
Luke Cook: Michael, good to be here, thank you.
Michael McGrath: Why don’t you talk to us a little bit about who you are and what you’re currently doing. And then we’ll then we’ll delve back a bit. Yeah.
Luke Cook: So yeah, I’m the founder and host of a platform called Cuppa.tv. We support businesses with their wellbeing, performance and belonging. And it’s been an incredible journey to take, which I know we’re going to talk about.
Michael McGrath: Now for the uninitiated, which I was until I did a bit of research. It’s a virtual cafe, right? Yeah. Who doesn’t like a cuppa?
Luke Cook: Right? Who doesn’t like a cup of tea? You know, the essence of what a cuppa is, is about meaningful conversation. Yeah, like what we’re doing today. I feel that you know, as a society, our conversational muscle is weakened in many parts because of COVID, hybrid working, but also technology, you look at all the productivity tools that are out there, everything’s about getting the job done quicker, but less about how do we authentically connect? And I suppose that’s the essence of Cuppa is how do we have more meaningful conversations around topic areas that are of importance to not only work but also life and society as a whole. And that’s what we bring to the table?
Michael McGrath: So, look Luke, I know this has really taken off, you’ve had some great people join you. And it’s you’ve run it; you’ve turned it into a very successful business.
Luke Cook: Originally, I wanted to just make people happy, right? Because I started thinking about what I enjoyed in my career, and it was about happiness. I then started thinking about, well, what have I got access to, and I had access to sporting clubs, sporting codes, musicians, really unique experiences, because of the industry. And I’ve always been you. I looked at the market and I looked at the experience market. And at the time there was like RedBalloon there and all these sort of experiential based businesses, but I thought nothing there truly is what I want on those sites. So, then I went on a journey of discovery and I, I ended up thinking about an idea called FUNLOCKA, and FUNLOCKA was my first business. FUNLOCKA was a business that was the way that I saw it is I wanted companies to reward people in their organisation employees with things in life that they enjoy. So instead of a movie card, let’s reward you with standing on the field with your favourite footy team. And the way that the platform or the idea would work is we built an app. Self-funded. And we would match experiences to people’s interest. So, sort of like Red Balloon on steroids mix with Tinder, okay, every time you logged on, you say yes or no on new experiences, and the algorithm will learn what you love. And then companies could reward you with things in life that you enjoy. Okay, if that makes sense.
Michael McGrath: So, it sounds like a great idea.
Luke Cook: Yeah, amazing idea, right? Well, first, it was about, well, how do we prototype it or build a design template for it? I took that out to a few companies. They said, oh, we’re interested in it. So, I started getting a bit of validation in that in just the very basic prototype. Then I was wondering how actually funded and came to a point where I decided to put my balls on the line in all honesty, and I ended up selling my apartment and using the equity of that apartment to fund the build of the app with no tech background, or anything. So that was probably my biggest scar wound. Definitely stuffed up the UX in the first iteration, which costs a lot of money. But built the app. Yeah, got the product in market got clients on board. Then I stumbled upon the realisation that to scale these businesses, it’s a supply and demand thing, firstly, but then what we’re offering we’re experienced that will localise to each market that we’re unique and special. Okay. So we’re very good in Sydney in our offering. Yeah. Because we knew everyone, by when companies wanted us in other markets, how do we validate that? How do we grow that?
Michael McGrath: You mean from a contact? So, you had all the contacts in Sydney? Right? You could make that happen, but then trying to do that in Melbourne or Perth? And yeah, I mean, I deal with a lot of tech businesses on the board of a few. That early-stage stuff you want to build it and generally it’s like, we will build it and they will come and then you realise okay, there’s, we need a lot of money to get this marketed really ticked because you’re just fighting in a busy space to get awareness. It’s either gonna cut your cash or time Yeah, or both, or both
Luke Cook: Right both for me. Yeah. So it was it was pretty full on, I enjoyed it, don’t get me wrong, I loved it because we were also, you know, we were doing some great stuff we were actually prior to, you know, COVID hitting when everything hit the fan like for many businesses, you know, we were very close with some big organisations, supermarket chains, etc, that were looking at us to maybe fill their own rewards programmes and stuff. So, there was some momentum building and we’re starting to find different product fits. It’s just cash flow was the biggest struggle and then COVID happened and it changed.
Michael McGrath: So, you had a particular client, was it that just pulled up stamps? Or was there a few?
Luke Cook: Yeah, we had, we probably had about we had about 200 grands worth of revenue about to be signed off, which would have given us another bit more productive dev ability, because we’re going to integrate into existing software’s with our rewards. So we’re going to be like a reward creator for these existing software’s. Yeah, so that dropped. And then we had one big one with the supermarket’s drop, which was a massive one that impacted us when COVID hit.
Michael McGrath: So, right. I mean, sounds to me like you haven’t put a foot wrong. I mean, you really haven’t put a foot wrong. You’ve backed yourself and you, you can see that idea. You saw an opportunity. And then we say you got mugged by reality, meaning COVID I mean, yeah. COVID put paid to plenty of emerging opportunities, really. And particularly in certain areas, right. You know, anything linked to retail, hospitality, events.
Luke Cook: When COVID hit, not only did we see the clients pulling the stuff over a week period, which was hard. It was hard in a few factors. I’ll get to that. But the other part was, is we had 300 suppliers on board. All of them shut their doors. Yeah, they were struggling as well. Yeah. Like all the experience providers, football clubs, footy codes, you name it, everything stopped. So, we didn’t have any experiences left. We could have gone just to do virtual experiences. But that was going to be peacemaker-ish. Yeah. And at the time, that’s what we’re thinking, because we didn’t know how I was going to do it. Okay. And again, in my head, I’m going to I gotta get a job. Do I drive Uber? Do I, because the biggest thing for me was I invested everything into this bloody app, and at the time, I didn’t even know how I was going to put food on the table for my family. And so, I hit the ground pretty hard.
Michael McGrath: That’s, you know, that’s the heart of it for me, because, you know, you’ve experienced what many, many businesspeople experienced. In fact, it goes for us to say that some companies in the US will only hire a CEO, if they’ve gone broke. And the reason that they do that, I mean, you’ve got to be reasonably in line to do that. But there are plenty of companies that get that, because that’s when you, that’s when you really find out who you are, yeah. And you find out who your friends are and aren’t. You’ve got, you’ve got nowhere else to go at that point. And then you’ve got to piece it back together. So, what was going on at that point for you.
Luke Cook: You know, my entrepreneurial brain kicked in, I was starting to come up with, you know, other ideas, or I was contacting close mates just to keep food on the table and stuff like that. But in reality, personally, I hit the ground pretty hard. I went through a bit of a guilt trip, because I was 39 years by this stage, because FUNLOCKA was about three to three and a half, four years old at that time when it happened. Yeah. And I just had a kid, I had nothing else left. So, I went on a guilt trip of I can’t believe I’m 39 years old. And I put my family into this situation. And so, I hit the ground pretty hard. But I think you know, as an entrepreneur and founder, and someone who’s always got ideas, at least I was looking up, and it took me to go to the coffee shop one morning. Yeah. And the coffee shop for me was my morning joy. Right? It was where I could get my double shot latte and just spend some time by myself just walk into and back from the coffee shop. And I started thinking about my own mental health. But then I started thinking about the mental health of others, because I knew COVID was an issue, but I knew that mental health and wellbeing would be the biggest thing I remember posting on LinkedIn, that comment that I know COVID is bad, but let’s stop thinking about everyone’s mental health and wellbeing and few people fired back at me because of the way that I said it and stuff like that that COVID is really serious. We’ve got to don’t try and downplay COVID and all that type of stuff. But in harsh reality, I knew that I was only one person of millions going gonna go through some struggling times. So, you know, walking back from the coffee shop, I called my business partner, then Jill, who was who’s been on the entrepreneurial journey with me since day one. Yeah. And I just said to her, Jill, how do we, you know, how do we help people just start their day with some positivity and inspiration and I just said to her, I said, let’s start a, you know, a morning cuppa. Let’s, let’s try and create a cafe feel where you have conversations with experts and personalities. And let’s just help people start their day with something that isn’t a bad news story. And I got home, I thought about a name of a business called Cuppa of Life at the time. I looked at free images on the internet, I downloaded a cafe backdrop, I ordered it on Officeworks for $40. And it got delivered two days later. And within a week, we started our first virtual Cafe, which we opened it up free of charge, we had Gus Worland from Triple M, who’s also the founder of GOTCHA4LIFE, right, which is a charity around mental health. And we had our first conversation around mateship and, you know, connection and being there for others during hard times. We had about 100 people show up. The next week, we had people like Kerri Pottharst, Layne Beachley, come on. Because at the end of the day, all these experts lost all their jobs. All their speaking gigs were gone. Yeah. So, they had the time. It was one of those sorts of things where everyone was equal. Right. And so, you know, we just started, Commandos Steve came on.
Michael McGrath: So, this was sort of April, was it and this was April 2020. Did you get a website? Or what did you have to do?
Luke Cook: So, we were sort of still going through FUNLOCKA site at the time, because we didn’t know what we were doing really. We set up a webinar software called WebinarJam. We thought about the show format a little bit. I think my old school days in radio promotion coming 360 Yeah. And yeah, we just press live. And I had fun every morning. And it kept me going.
Michael McGrath: So how long? How long did it go for this particular? Half an hour? Half an hour?
Luke Cook: 8:30am to 9am. Okay. And it changed my life.
Michael McGrath: So, you created a lot of content, basically,
Luke Cook: Huge amount of content, but it wasn’t just content. It was it was giving people a place. Yeah. It was getting, like it started off with 50 to 100 people and then 100 to 200. And then, you know, we got like, there’s some episodes there that we had like close to 700 to 800 people on online at the one time, we kept the chat room vibey, Jill would be in the chat room. People we were starting getting emails from people saying I really needed this. Thank you for being a friend. Like how do you not many businesses get called thank you for being a friend. And so what we started seeing is that true connection happening and and I went on the biggest learning journey, and this is this is my biggest thing about leadership and business right now is I think too much of the time is spent within our own bubble, right, our own bubble of our world, our own bubble of business, by where real learning takes place is when we have conversations with people that are different from us. Yeah. And I in my media days when I was a high-flying media sales executive, I had a white Audi you know, I was that tokenistic person, I was flying my heli, this is this not I didn’t have a helicopter. Metaphorically. We got it. So, I was in my helicopter thinking and I knew about situations in life, like indigenous culture and connection, sustainability, disability, transgender. When it’s only taken me since I landed that helicopter with Cuppa to actually truly understand and my my ability to be a better leader, a better, better husband, a better father, to my kids. I wish every leader could go through the difficult conversation journey that I’ve been through. Yeah, to grow themselves
Michael McGrath: That’s interesting. So, you, effectively you your aha moment was, you know, was a question you asked yourself, wasn’t it? Which was how can we help? Some people that might be
Luke Cook: How do I help myself, but how do I help my people in
Michael McGrath: I mean, that’s, and that’s a very enlightened thought really, at that point. Because most people feeling sorry for themselves big time at that point. Yeah, you know, and I’m sure there’s elements of that for you as well. But you you had enough space there to say, right, well, how could we help others
Luke Cook: I personally went through a journey of I call it own, tell, own tell and be. Own is, you’ve got to own it. Like no one else. It was my responsibility. At the end of the day, I couldn’t blame anyone. I couldn’t blame COVID I had to own that situation. Yeah. So, it that’s tough to sit down and go okay, I’m in this this is me. No one else is going to help me I gotta get myself through this. Yeah, then I had to tell myself a different story.
Michael McGrath: Well, let me just get back to that. So, owning it. Right. I think it’s really interesting. The idea you own something without getting crushed by it. Right. So, it’s walking that balance between okay, I made some bad calls. It hasn’t worked out well in hindsight, right. But giving yourself enough space to then move on constructively because I think too many of us get too down too quickly and get it gets crashing. And I don’t think that’s that useful. Really.
Luke Cook: No. Don’t get me wrong, though. Like I cried for almost six months like I’m not backwards in that I cried a lot. Yeah, because of the situation every bill that I’ve got coming in either from work
Michael McGrath: painful, right? It’s humbling as well. I mean, you know, you know, you know times I’ve owed people money it’s you know, it’s way worse in practice than it is in theory.
Luke Cook: But then I talk to my accountant, and he goes, mate, the money that you owe compared to some of the other businesses I know out there that owe money? Yes, you don’t worry bro like you’re, you’re buying candy versus, you know.
Michael McGrath: But it’s the interpretation you put on it as well.
Luke Cook: It’s the internal dialogue that give yourself, right? Because you can go on a tangent, right? It can snowball so quickly. And you just got to find out and this is where the tell comes in. You got to start telling yourself a different story. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta position your your tell is okay, yeah. Crap. Crap has happened. Yeah. But I’m gonna get up every morning, I’m gonna go see the sunrise because I know it’s a new day, right? That’s telling yourself a different story. Okay, I’m gonna, I’m going to I don’t have to do what I have to do I get to do what I get to do. Yeah, you know, like, you got to start reframing. You got to start flipping the script. Yeah, no, no, that’s difficult. Yeah. The other thing that I did at the time was I created these happy cards. And those happy cards were things that brought me joy. And whenever I was starting to feel like I was going on a tangent, I’d look at that. And it might be, you know, when, when my favourite footy team won that game. Or is that that song of mine that I love. Yeah, you know, you got to start, you got to start interrupting the mental cycle.
Michael McGrath: Well it’s kind of shifting the focus, isn’t it? But I mean, we’re talking really about character here, developing character. Strengthening is like a muscle, isn’t it? It’s going, you know, what am I going to do that that’s going to support me and get me off the fact that, you know, things have gone badly.
Luke Cook: The biggest learning for me, and it started happening with Cuppa is the fact that one conversation can change your life, right? You being your own internal dialogues, not going to change anything, by you having the ability to be bold enough and brave enough to have one conversation. Yeah.
Michael McGrath: So what was that one conversation?
Luke Cook: Ah, one conversation was picking up the phone and calling my first client about Cuppa and getting them across the line. One conversation was chatting to one of my new contacts at the time, who was a former monk and venture capitalists and saying, I need help.
Michael McGrath: Yeah, it’s sort of taking action, in a way. I mean, it’s, it’s getting out of your head. And then, and then verbalising, whatever’s going on, and then getting into action in a way.
Luke Cook: Like I always look at life as the power of one and it could be one conversation. It could be one minute of breathing, the you know, like the power of one. It doesn’t sound like the power of like many, like sending yourself a whole action list is too much. And especially in if you’re in that mindset, it’s just about just getting through that one thing, that one thing, that one thing, and then you get momentum, right? Yeah. And momentum is where life changes 100%
Michael McGrath: Look we see in business; we send transactions we see all over the place. You’ve got to have the resilience to take the knocks and come back. Rarely, and that’s different for different people. But you know, we can see two and a half years work down a drain in almost a split second. Yeah. And, you know, it’s having that ability to just get back on the bike and start pedalling. Right and not personalising that hopefully that was
Luke Cook: That was probably the hardest thing for me, I’ll personalise I take a lot on emotionally and, and stuff like that, which
Michael McGrath: I mean, I work with a lot of younger entrepreneurs, because I know what it’s like to be in business at 20 and not really know much. And that’s, that’s the deal already is you got to stop personalising everything and you know, accept the fact that reality is reality. And it’s going to come and get you and sometimes it’s going to reward you and other times, you’re going to feel like you just had a kick way where you don’t want to kick Yeah, it’s a big leap though to go from I’m going to help someone which is a well-known, timeless phenomenon where you there’s always someone else you can you can smart you know even if it’s a smile or a leg up, or if we can help someone else, we start piecing our lives back together generally right. But to go from that to helping a bunch of people, clearly there’s a big need, people are feeling isolated, vulnerable. It’s COVID. We were starting to isolate before COVID Anyway, so you’re helping people not isolate. You do that free for a year by hook or by crook you managed to pay the bills, how do you turn it into a business model
Luke Cook: So, what happened was whilst I did the morning sessions free of charge, leaders were attending our session. Okay. leaders were then calling me and saying hey, can we do a private session on that conversation that I just watched for my team? Okay, so then all of a sudden, we started turning our virtual sessions for companies and we started making money that way because it was everyone needed something. Yeah, yeah. And then we started diversifying our conversations around multiple topic areas like everything to do with wellbeing but then also performance how do we communicate battle how to lead better how do we have a better mindset and then also around belonging, you know, diversity and inclusion topics, sustainability, etc. So, we diversified our conversations across mainly the three pillars that I knew businesses were focused on skill when it comes to things that aren’t traditional business base needs.
Michael McGrath: So, you started to turn some income
Luke Cook: We started to turn some income which paid for Jill and my salary in all honesty and kept food on the table, which was getting through. Where I saw it starting to change for me was, we launched a programme in September 2020, called Spring Into You. And Spring Into You was a six-week programme to help people navigate from fear to developing a life plan. When it came to fear, we had Jill Hicks, a London bombing survivor join us. And she spoke about fear. But every week we had a different talent navigating people through that. I had 40 businesses sign up for it and 10,000 people in attendance.
Michael McGrath: And that was about navigating fear?
Luke Cook: Fear to developing a life plan. Right? So it was a six week programme to get. That’s when I started thinking about, well, I can just have one session and get multiple businesses on it to pay a premium. And then, you know, I’m only paying the talent fees once but I’m making a lot more money on the seat sort of like a concert or a conference, right? And then was developed another programme, same result, same result. And so, then we started looking at, well, what does it look like? I suppose we stayed in this cycle for about a year, year and a bit. Yeah. And then then it hit me, which is what you said earlier, I was sitting on this all this content, because we recorded every session, right. And it was sitting in a hard drive. I wasn’t doing anything with it. But then I started thinking about well, what are we doing now? And as soon as the signs started showing that, you know, COVID was, you know, things were changing, I suppose we started thinking about, well, where does Cuppa now move to in more of a hybrid model moving forward? So, yeah, so probably about June or July, we started navigating what that new new thing would look like, Okay. And then that’s when Cuppa.tv started to come about.
Michael McGrath: Okay, so explain Cuppa.tv in a bit more detail then.
Luke Cook: Sitting on about 20,000 minutes’ worth of content doing nothing. By that stage, we interviewed over 350 different experts, personalities and storytellers from all across the world. And we worked with about 110 different businesses in that two-year period.
Michael McGrath: And were you having to pay those guys or
Luke Cook: People that are paid on Morning Cuppan no. Okay. But when they when we ever we did like a programme stuff like that Spring Into You, yes, we pay them. But then we, you know, a lot of the experts were getting money off us, there was one expert that called me up recently, who just did their tax last year. And she goes, I just wanted to thank you, you got me through COVID. Because you know that there was a bit of 50 or 60 grand that we made for her through private bookings, which we did take money off as well. So it was another revenue stream for us. But yeah, that’s when I started thinking about, well, how do we package this content up in a way that businesses can utilise it ongoing? So, if you want to think about Cuppa.tv, it’s like Netflix. But for conversations, okay. I say it’s where binge watching actually improves your work and life. Okay. And we spend so much time in digital junk. Yeah, social media, scrolling all the rest of it. This is purposeful content ready for you, and what we did is we went through each session. Yeah. So I went through probably about 150 transcripts, at least, I picked out the best bits. It could be a one-minute moment with Layne Beachley on mindset. Yeah. It could be a 60-minute masterclass on solving your insecurity with Jaemin Frazer, okay. And that sits on the platform now. So, companies use it as a resource, people and culture leads, leaders use it as a resource to communicate effectively, great conversations to their teams whenever they want to. Yeah, and we still do all the live sessions and everything like that.
Michael McGrath: So, the market really is a corporate market. I’ve got people, I’ve got responsibilities, I need to solve some problems.
Luke Cook: Yeah. And primarily, we see a lot of uptake from businesses with underneath sort of 200 employees, maybe because they’ve only got one HR director. Maybe they can’t afford the talent that we have access to, like in May this year, we had 115 grands worth the talent appear. Not many companies can afford the amount of talent that we have access to.
Michael McGrath: So, you’re leveraging talent, really, you’re saying okay, I got this talent. Let’s put it in front of as many people as we can.
Luke Cook: Yep. So, Cuppa is a membership based model. So, people individuals can join, you can join yourself if you want to. It’s $19.95 a month, right? And you get access to all our content, all our live sessions.
Michael McGrath: Sounds cheap.
Luke Cook: It’s cheap as.
Michael McGrath: So, $20 a month, and companies are signing up to that.
Luke Cook: Companies will buy memberships for their employees.
Michael McGrath: It’s 20 hours a month per person,
Luke Cook: Per person memberships come down based on scale of employees.
Michael McGrath: Interesting. So that’s the basic membership for the for the channel. So, you get access to the conversations. And then outside of that, you’ve got other corporate services.
Luke Cook: So, we’ve got it’s really interesting. Our model is I’m seeing a lot of variety in where our model can go. But initially, right now it’s membership-based platform. We then have booking speakers which we make commission off, okay. And then we also have other services. So, organising experiences, pop-up cafes, we just did one at Wynyard Park up the road there, where we were there for two days the other day doing a pop-up café with our experts. And so, what we’re doing now is we’re taking Cuppa to places and spaces as well, we’re probably not many people would think like this, but we’re actually reversing it a little bit, we started virtual. But now we want to get Cuppa into more places and spaces. And the reason why that is, is we need to be where conversations need to be had. And for me, that is a big part of why Cuppa’s here, we need to be visually seen and visually known to make an impact. Okay. So, we’ve got other layers there. Where it’s interesting for us is our content can be utilised in so many ways. Right. So, we’ve got companies reaching out to us now. Existing platforms, existing providers, existing businesses, like major, major corporates, yeah. The high end of town who need content. Yes. Because if their got wellbeing programmes they need so can we can write articles, we can do podcasts, we can, we can create content, we can share conversations that we’ve done with other experts. Yeah. In a licence model, versus an owned model. Okay. Got it. And I suppose all I’m doing is I’m going well, okay, that’s worked. Let’s go forward a few more cases on that. That’s not working. I’m just, you just go to it. I think the thing was me with Cuppa is FUNLOCKA always felt like a sell. Yeah, Cuppa has just flowed to what it needs to be.
Michael McGrath: Because I mean, we call that push and pull. If it’s too hard, things are just too hard, or you got to push too hard. But sometimes it just kind of stuff falls into place. It does. And you’ve got to kind of go with our respect that because there’s something going on, there’s some genuine need being filled, isn’t there, versus, you know, as you said, the push side of it?
Luke Cook: Well, I’ll tell you the example. Like when we when we launched like last year, we saved a person’s life, right. They tuned into Cuppa on their worst day, a day when they were thinking about doing something bad to themselves. They listened to me being vulnerable to the expert on who was appearing at the time, that expert was almost giving me a live sort of not coaching session, but sharing, you know what I was going through while I was going through, it happened to be the same sort of thing that that person was going through, you just don’t know where one conversation is going to go. It happened the other day at that pop-up cafe, we were having a conversation with an incredible corporate wellbeing expert called Chelsea Pottenger. She’s incredible. And we were on stage, and I said, has anyone got any questions in the audience and this lady put up her hand and her voice was trembling, you could just tell straight away, we stuck around Chelsea myself 30 minutes afterwards and just listened to what was going on with her. Again, she was literally having suicidal thoughts that week. So, you just you don’t know. And these are employees of businesses. These are these are people in your organisation. And it’s all good to do tick the box-based strategies, but unless you got a full understanding around well, you don’t know when people are going to tap into the conversation that they need.
Michael McGrath: Okay, what’s the future? Do you think? What’s the future for Cuppa.TV and your business? For me? I mean, clearly, there’s a big need.
Luke Cook: Yeah, I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you a dream that I have. It’s not the future business model. But a dream is to have my own cafe. Okay, I want my own cafe with a studio in the middle where people can come and watch us do the conversations, but also have a great event space there for people to come in and just connect with our authors and speakers. That is a visual dream for me. It’s not the business operational dream, it’s part of it, because it is part of our places and spaces approach. But you know, conversations exist everywhere. Conversations exist in the home. Conversations exists when we’re out, conversations exist in the workplace. How do I cover off those three? How can I support people to have more, feel confident to have more difficult conversations? Yeah, if it’s a parent with a kid about their mental health, if it’s a new parent that doesn’t know what they’re doing in life, when they’ve just got a new kid and they’re struggling, if it’s learning more about indigenous culture and connection, so I think for us with Cuppa we’ll go deeper on conversations. Okay. And we’ll broadcast that out in many places and spaces as possible.
Michael McGrath: I mean, effectively, you’re, you’re responding to a broader societal need right? Now, we could sit here all night talking about why and how we got here. But the reality is, we are we are living in an unprecedented time, really, in history in terms of, you know, we’ve got this technological experiment going on, which is really only what 20 years old. Think of the iPhone and social media. It’s a 20-year experiment, really, we the governments around the world in the first world haven’t got their heads around the regulation of that. And we’ve got huge issues with our youth big time and our young and you know, we’re as parents and employers and you know, fathers as you you’ve said, fathers, brothers, whatever, when we’re having to navigate this, I mean, you can’t get a psychologist in Sydney. You’ve got to wait three months for a child psychologist in Sydney. I mean, they’re completely overwhelmed with challenges.
Luke Cook: I think what we got to get to is an acknowledgement based culture that we are we are here for people when they need it. Okay. And I, what I really get ticked off, is that no return, it’s okay, the acknowledgement, hey, I’m busy at the moment, but I’ll call you back in a week or whatever it may be, or I’m going through my own thing. I think what we need to make sure that we’re doing is always acknowledging that people are there. Okay. Because like what you said, even prior to COVID, loneliness was one of the biggest factors, and it’s impacting everything. And my scare, my scare, my issue is that we are losing that conversational muscle. Yeah, we are not flexing it enough to be able to handle what the current society is throwing at us. Yes. As a majority, the majority of the population I’m talking about.
Michael McGrath: Fascinating subject, we could go on and on. Look. I can’t let you go without asking. We do a few standard questions at the end, right. So, I didn’t give you a heads up ,sorry about that, that but I’m sure you’ll be fine. So, tell me, favourite place in the world.
Luke Cook: I think the moments that you create in the places is probably the best for me. And the moment that I had driving down from San Fran to LA by myself was something that I’ll never never forget.
Michael McGrath: And so, what about what’s your favourite book? What book has impacted your most. I’m sure you’re a reader.
Luke Cook: A recent one, actually, a guy by the name of Paul Calligan, an indigenous leader has written a book with an indigenous older Uncle Paul. They’ve written a book called The Dreaming path. Okay, the Dreaming Path. It talks about indigenous thinking to change your life. Right? You know, the biggest topics in the last 10 years have been around mental health and wellbeing and all that. I think we’ve forgotten that First Nations people started that 100,000 100,000 plus years ago, we’ve got a lot to learn, right by by sitting in the dirt and listening and, and just and incorporating some of the fantastic learnings that they have. This book is a game changer. It’s a game changer for business. It’s a game changer for leaders.
Michael McGrath: I’m going to get a copy of that and read it. Yeah. What about your film favourite film?
Luke Cook: Made? Like I love Forrest Gump. I used to love Major League Baseball back as a kid.
Michael McGrath: Okay, so there’s plenty of those baseball type films. They’re great.
Luke Cook: I love Major League Baseball. I can recite every word of it like anything, anything like that.
Michael McGrath: Luke ‘Cookie’ Cook. Absolute pleasure having this conversation today. Thanks for coming in to Troubleshooters. And I want to wish Cuppa.tv every success for the future. And I hope you go from strength to strength and continue to keep doing the good that you’re doing.
Luke Cooke: Appreciate it.
Michael McGrath: Till next time.
Luke Cook: See you later.
Michael McGrath: Wow, what a great guy genuine and so keen to help others. Going broke with a wife and a young child to support is no picnic. So how wonderful that Luke got back on his feet so quickly, and so positively. If you want to know more about Luke and Cuppa.TV, the details are in the show notes. Now a quick shout out to our sponsors, Oasis Partners, corporate advice with a practical bias. So, if you want top-notch real-world input for your business, call the team at Oasis. Finally, if you like this content, please share it with your friends. And if you’re feeling really generous, how about review? Only good ones, please. Five stars will be very nice. So, until next time, stay safe.