Youth Mental Health & Ocean Conservation | Blue Minds Co-Founders Cal Glanznig & Cooper Chapman

Yeah, definitely.

And even like, I mean, just listening to you and obviously, you know, I've come to learn a little bit about like the work that both of you have done individually, but then like together with Blue Minds, like you're obviously both extremely driven individuals, like both coming from like professional sporting backgrounds and then like starting your own businesses, organisations about like what seems to be like passion projects to you.

Can you speak to like what it's taken to build those projects, whether it's like Good Humans Factory or Blue Mines or even like Plastic Free Cronulla, like what that has actually taken behind the scenes in terms of like the work you've had to put into that?

I think a lot of the time when you, and this was a really interesting insight from Rising Up, the film that I made a couple of years ago, is like a lot of the time you put people on pedestals, you listen to them on podcasts or whatever it is, like think of Cooper and myself, but we've just been like chipping away, chipping away, chipping away, like that consistency and just showing up over a long enough time.

And I feel like that's been the real like, trick and or secret sauce if the if there is one like plastic free crinola like we started with one local cafe then we started with another and we just kept chipping away and then eventually we had over 300 businesses work with us to help um lobby to get um plastic ban in new south wales so it's just like that constant showing up and um same as like rising up i've had no experience in filmmaking and even the film i'm doing now the plastic country like yeah didn't go to film school or um anything but just sort of yeah being able to have no ego to reach out to people for help i think it's been really important to be able to like find the areas that you don't have a lot of knowledge in and actually try to you know have a curious mind and just say hey you know what should i do how do i raise money for a film or um what should i do with the sound design like all these different things that you don't know and i feel like just asking questions and just asking for help a lot of the time has been unreal and then yeah the same as blue minds like we got a little bit of money to sort of pilot it.

And then, yeah, the response from schools was incredible.

So then had to go raise more money.

And that's where the way we've sort of built Blue Minds is to try to, I guess, not discriminate for anyone being able to access the program.

So we've been able to have our workshops free and our program free.

So we've had to go like, um yeah sort of raised so it's just been this whole like journey of trying to like give it a crack but i think the common thread is just continually like chipping away and chipping away and then like things start to build over time and when you look back you're like oh far out you know look at how far you've gone you can

appreciate how far you've actually come yeah 10

year overnight success yeah and like the growth is incremental and then it becomes exponential but most people aren't willing to take all those initial steps and yeah Yeah.

I mean, two things when it comes to, I guess, building that have helped me is one is being like clear on your metric of success.

And for me, it's been, if I can just help one person, then it's worth it.

Whereas so many people like, oh, I don't have all these followers.

I haven't made this huge impact.

I don't have millions of followers, like millions of downloads on my podcast.

It's like, if one person's day is better because of you doing something, then then for me it's worth it so that's been like one big thing for me to like not be like oh my god I need to be doing so much and obviously you have comparison you see other people doing so much but it's like yeah but if you're positively impacting someone amazing but then the other thing when it comes to gross because for so long I've had so much imposter syndrome with what I do you know I'm not a mental health expert I'm a mental health advocate I'm somebody who speaks to a lot of people on my podcast and I've done a lot of research for my book and I have an incredible understanding But I'm not an expert.

I'm not a doctor.

I'm not a scientist.

And I had so much imposter syndrome for a long time.

But my one bit of advice for anyone trying to start something is take feedback from the beginning and realize that feedback has two things.

Positive feedback is great for the ego, for the imposter syndrome, but also for marketing.

Mm-hmm.

And negative feedback or, you know, criticism or critiquing you can use to improve.