Hi, I'm Gus Walland and this is Not An Overnight Success brought to you by Shaw and Partners Financial Services.
This is a podcast where we sit down with some very successful people from the world of business,
entertainment and sport and chat about their life's journey and what got them to the position they're in today. In today's episode
we are chatting with Lisa Wilkinson. Lisa is one of Australia's most respected journalists and media personalities.
we talk about her growing up in Sydney, being the middle child and good girl, as she says, and the bullying she experienced at school.
We talk about her career starting early and becoming the editor of a major national magazine at just 21 years of age and how that led to her
career into television. Lisa is graceful, she's dignified and it seems that just about anything she touches turns to gold.
She's incredibly talented and hardworking and she learned to trust her instincts and seize the opportunities that came her way, even if she
didn't quite feel like she was ready for them.
We speak about her time with The Today Show and answer a few questions surrounding her departure from the show that the headlines didn't
quite get correct. As for all these podcasts, Shaw and Partners Financial Services have generously donated
$10,000 to the charity of choice of each of our guests.
We discuss who gets that money in this chat.
The executive producer of this podcast is Keisha Pettit with production assistance from Kelly Stubbs and Brittany Hughes.
Let's get into our chat and I hope you enjoy it with Lisa Wilkinson.
Lisa Wilkinson, welcome to the podcast.
I'm great Gus, I've had a week off and so I feel like I could take on the world right now.
And you just had COVID as well, so you feel like you've got the antibodies in the system?
I've got the antibodies.
I feel like I should have one of those superwoman suits on and nothing can touch me.
There's lots of people that would say that about you that haven't met you as well, because I said today that I was
going to have you on the podcast and people are like, I'd love to meet her.
You know, you are someone that a lot of people look up to and feel like they know you because they've watched you
for so long. Do you feel that yourself?
It's always really lovely when people come up to me in the street or, you know, I'm in a cafe or something and they come
over and say hello. And other people often wonder if I have a problem with that.
And I figure the day that I decide that someone coming up and saying how much they love you or love your work or,
you know, you did something that really touched them.
If I get tired of that, can you tap me on the shoulder, Gus, and say, Lisa, you don't deserve this spot anymore.
Move over. Somebody else can be here.
Because it is it's a wonderful thing to be a journalist and be able to do work that people get something from.
That's an incredible privilege.
And it's it hasn't been lost on me for the 40 years that I've been a journalist.
I imagine that's the case.
But I'm assuming that that is who you are as a person, though.
Like you people look at you as someone that you're a safe pair of hands.
Like if Lisa says it, that's what's happening.
Do you feel that responsibility?
I certainly feel a responsibility of the position of trust that you're in as a journalist.
And I've never taken that for granted.
But how do I sort of see myself?
I see myself as a kid from the western suburbs of Sydney that lucked out big time.
That's my starting point.
When my first foot goes on the floor, this is who you are.
Yeah, I like that. Let's go back to the start.
What were you like as a kid?
And what was your family makeup like?
Well, I grew up in Campbelltown in the western suburbs.
I have an older brother and a younger brother.
Mum and dad, very hardworking dad and, you know, a homemaker mum.
And as a kid, I I just loved the world.
We had a boxer dog.
I've had boxer dogs for the rest of my life.
We lived in a very humble little weatherboard house that my father designed.
And we had a big backyard.
And every time it rained, a creek formed at the back.
And we had big trees that we used to climb.
And we collected frogs and silkworms and, you know, played on our bikes in the street.
And I remember the day that the streetlights went on for the very first time.
And it was a really beautiful spot to grow up and, you know, surrounded
by a very tight knit community.
And I feel incredibly blessed because I know not everyone gets that as a kid.
And, you know, my father in particular was a very community minded man.
And he was president of the local rugby union club.
And he was president of the Lions Club.
So he was all about charity and giving back always.
That is still the star that I steer by is, you know, what would dad think of that?
And dad passed away back in 1990.
And at the time, he was running Sydney Rugby Union.
And one of the footballers that he really admired, who was also a journalist,
was a guy by the name of Peter Fitzsimmons.
And bizarrely enough, in the weeks before dad passed away,
dad used to get me to read out that guy, Peter Fitzsimmons' columns.
Oh, all those big posh words that he uses.
Yep. Yeah. I need someone to read that out to me to explain half the stuff that Pete writes about.
There's plenty in there that's not very posh at all, by the way.
So, you know, I came from very much a rugby family.
And dad knew Pete and Pete knew dad as an administrator.
But we were never together at that point.
In fact, my two brothers played for the rugby union club that my dad was president of.
All of my girlfriends dated all the guys in the team.
My mother did the sausage sizzle every Saturday.
And so I made a very conscious decision.
I'm never dating a footballer.
The dog and I are staying home on Saturday afternoons.
Like, I'm not. I want my world to be bigger than football and blow me down.
If 18 months after dad passed away,
I started dating this guy called Peter Fitzsimmons.
And nine months after that, I was walking down the aisle.
Sadly, not on my father's arm, but my older brother's arm.
Yeah. And the best man was Nick Far-Jones, who just months before
had held the Rugby World Cup aloft.
1991, which was my dad's great ambition that the Wallabies could do that.
And I looked to the heavens and I said out loud, Dad, you got me.
That's so awesome. Yeah, he was there on the day.
I know he was. No doubt about that.
Were you close as a family? Were you close to your brothers?
Did you have a good relationship with mom and dad?
I was the annoying sister and I was the classic middle child.
Like I was the good girl. Never wanted to disappoint anyone.
Teachers, parents, you know, I was an A grade student
right through primary school, did ballet, you know, was was really good at ballet.
In fact, I wanted to be a ballerina, but I gave it up in high school
because I sort of went through a bit of a school of hard knocks in high school
because there was some pretty bad bullying.
And I realised that doing ballet was very uncool.
And when you get bullied, you really you don't want to be good at anything.
You don't want to stand out at anything.
It's actually much more comfortable in the shadows and disappearing between the cracks.
And so I thought if I stop ballet, I won't shine anymore.
But I don't regret it because it led me in another direction completely.
But gee, I was a good ballerina. God, I was good.
I loved it. That feeling of just soaring through the air
and just owning a stage and feeling that music
and just the beauty of ballet was just I was imbued with all of that.
But see it and see it in your face when you're talking about it.
You just light up. Yeah.
Just it's like anyone, you know, when you're finding your feet
in your place in the world, if you find that you're good at something
and you have people who believe in you and encourage you and support you.
I mean, it's just such a great feeling.
Of course, those bullies now, you know, have you ever
I got bullied at school, too, for my weight mainly.
But I went back to the five year, you know, because I went to the same school
as Pete, you know, into the five, 10, 15, 20, 25, coming up to the thirty
five year reunion. Yeah.
Those blokes now, I feel sorry for them, you know, and some of them
are still bullies, but in a different way, just just older bullies
with less hair and a bigger tummy.
I'm disappointed in myself sometimes that I didn't stick up the more I did.
Basically, just, you know what?
I don't want any friction here, so I'll back away.
Have you come across them?
Well, I write in my book about a very unexpected episode
that happened at my 40th school reunion.
And yes, I did come across the bullies, and I'm not going to be able
to do the story justice.
In fact, I was going to leave that story out of the book
because I had a bit of a winning moment and I felt in many ways
that it was a little unfair because there is something
quite particular about doing 13 years of public education
where there's no where's and graces.
You don't presume any kind of privilege at all because you don't know anyone.
And you know that the only way you're going to get anywhere
in the world is by working hard because there's no old school tie.
There's no connections.
There's nothing but hard work between you and possibly doing well.
Yeah. And so I recognise that I've done well as an adult
and my little 15 year old self would not have believed the life
that I've been lucky enough to lead.
But when you go to school reunions, there is that feeling of,
oh, so what are you doing now?
And I'm very aware that, you know, most of the people
I went to school with have sort of followed my career.
And and I always I'm always fascinated by their lives.
I want to know what they've done.
I want to know their passions.
And that's why I got into journalism.
I'm interested in people's stories.
So, yes, I did meet up with those bullies.
And well, I discovered that they were still bullies.
And let's just say I had a moment that my little 15 year old self
would have been very, very proud of.
It's high five on that.
I did that for every kid who's ever been bullied.
But it was very, very spontaneous.
But it was just one of those moments that was bowled up to me
And I thought I'm going to have to reach in and find my voice right now.
That is so good. Yeah.
And then you eventually come out of school
and quite early in your life do get success, you know, for people in there.
I've got a 22 year old at home and he's not running a massive big
magazine and that type of stuff.
So how did you how did you get that so quickly?
And what was the opportunity that that arose for you to take on Dolly?
Well, like most young women of my era, growing up in the 70s and 80s,
I read Dolly magazine.
That was the go to teen Bible for every girl in Australia
and every guy who had a sister who read.
So Dolly was sort of looking after the sex education,
the emotional well-being, the fashion advice, the pop stars,
the everything of a typical Aussie childhood Bible.
And it came out once a month.
And every Tuesday, I would be the first in line
at the Chamberlain Street shops to buy my copy of Dolly on the way to school.
And, you know, I would go into Miss Coleman's geography class
and I would always have it confiscated.
And if I'd known then what I know now, I could have just said,
excuse me, Miss Coleman, do you mind?
I'm studying for my career here.
Because by the time I decided that I wanted to be a journalist,
which sort of came about in a whole lot of different ways,
like I always used to love shows like Four Corners and This Day Tonight
and Mike Willis is a current affair.
And I was just always fascinated by the world around me and news.
And and I'm a great believer.
If you're doing all of the talking, you're not doing any of the listening.
And the only reason I'm doing that now is because you've asked me to do this.
But but I love hearing how people live their lives.
And I think everybody's got a book in them.
Everyone's got amazing stories if you just stop down and listen.
And combined with this love of Dolly,
I decided I wanted to be a journalist, but I also wanted to travel
because I thought I've led this really small life in the suburbs.
I haven't really lived my life yet.
And if I want to be a journalist, I want to go out there and I want to
fall in love with the wrong boy in a cafe in Morocco.
And I want to fall asleep in a hammock in the Greek islands.
And I want to, you know, scramble to pay the rent in some squat in London
while I'm trying to get together enough money to get back home again.
And just know what the rollercoaster of life,
when you're just out there on your own, feels like,
because then I'll have something to offer once I come back and try and get a cadetship.
I said a bunch of friends I was going to travel with.
So I thought, OK, I'll go to business college after I do year 12.
I'll get shorthand and typing, which is what you needed back in those days.
And then I'll get a job for a year, save really hard.
We'll all head overseas.
Then I'll come back and I'll be worthy of a possible cadetship.
But I did the shorthand and typing and the very first day
I looked in the paper for a job, you know, in the women and girls
employment section of the Sydney Morning Herald.
There was a women's and there was women and girls section was.
And isn't it fantastic that we look at that and think what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's an indication of how far we've come.
And I stopped at this tiny three line ad under the letter D
that said Dolly magazine is looking for a secretary
stroke editorial assistant stroke girl Friday.
Who is prepared to do absolutely anything.
Phone Cathy on six double nine, three, six double two.
You remember I've still got the ad.
So I phoned Cathy on six double nine, three, six double two.
And somehow out of the dozens and dozens and dozens of girls
that would have applied for that job, I got it.
And from the very first moment I walked in there, I had found my passion.
There was just nothing else I wanted to do.
And it was a really small staff.
But the editor was was much older than the magazine's readership.
And it's amazing how so not old that woman sounds to me these days.
But she was very out of touch with the readership.
I had seven years of back issues of Dolly still sitting under my bed
that I still flicked through, even though I was 19.
There was just it had taken a place in my heart that,
you know, I'd grown up with every single one of those issues.
I couldn't throw them out.
I'd be throwing out my my adolescence. Yeah.
And so I was I was just so connected to that audience.
And it just came to me really easily.
I just knew what they needed to do because I felt the magazine was out of touch.
And I kept making suggestions in editorial meetings.
And I really knew that the 55 year old editor was out of touch when I said to her,
Look, we just have to realize that the Bay City Rollers are no longer cool
and we should do a giant tear out poster of meatloaf.
And she looked at me with horror and she said, Lisa,
these are not the woman's weekly cookery pages.
Wow. You don't know that meatloaf is a singer
and it has the biggest album in the country called that out of hell.
It's a bit of a big deal.
I'm talking about meatloaf recipes.
As Margaret Fulton put that in, she was on one of the floors.
She was working in the building like so starry eyed every time I saw her.
Yeah. As it turned out, three months later,
she went to be the editor of Woman's Day, where ironically enough,
meatloaf recipes really were a big seller.
So she went to where she needed to be.
And just as I was offered a cadetship, the deputy editor became editor.
And she said to me, I really need you.
And I became deputy editor.
And 12 months after that, just when I really should have been going overseas
with my girlfriends, she decided that she was now going overseas
on an extended holiday and that I was the editor.
And it was I didn't even have a moment, Gus, to think about it,
because I couldn't, because I just knew all over this building
with Woman's Day, Cosmo, Electronics Australia, People magazine.
Like they were all in this building.
It was part of Fairfax.
I just knew all over the building,
there would have been fully trained up journalists thinking,
who the hell does this trumped up little typist think she is?
Of course, the truth is, that's exactly what I was thinking.
And I thought, if I listen to any of those naysayers,
I'll believe what they've got to say.
So I can't. So there was no congratulations.
I just had to get down to work. Actually, I lie.
There was one call from a crusty old Fairfax board member
who rang to wish me a hell of a lot more luck
with the teenage population of Australia than he was currently having
with his 15 year old daughter.
And we all know what that means.
Yeah. So I thought, OK, well, I'll run with that as my only congratulations.
And I just put my head down and thought, I'm going to get one shot at this.
Because I was working with people who had been there two years before
when I knocked on the door, just hoping to be good enough
to make them all a cup of coffee. Yeah.
And I was now their boss.
So I got into this position of responsibility so quickly and seniority
that nobody had actually thought about teaching me any of the rules.
So I wrote a few of my own and probably broke plenty.
But I don't know which rules I broke.
But within four years, we tripled the circulation
because we were just on fire.
Because one of the privileges about being a boss that no one ever tells you
is that over time, you get to choose every single person
you spend your intense working hours with every day.
That's another privilege that I just kind of went,
who's been keeping this a secret? Yeah.
Like all of these people inspire me.
I learn from them every day.
And as a team, we get to create magic.
And every month we can wipe the chalkboard clean and start all over again.
Was there a moment in all of that happening
and you saying it with a big smile on your face and you're lighting up
all very successful stuff?
Was there a moment in there where you went,
I actually wish this had come a little later
and I'd got a chance to go overseas with my girlfriends?
Like, was there any moment there of any sort of regret?
Because most of us Aussies, we're so far away from the world.
We do shoot off between 18 and 22.
And it's sort of like that gap years become a gap few years now, hasn't it?
Yeah. Any regrets there?
I'm just not someone that's ever lived with regrets.
I think because I've been so fortunate with the opportunities
that have come along my way.
I think if I have a talent, it's for recognising opportunities
when they come along and just running with them, not knowing,
you know, where it's going to end up, but just thinking,
this is only going to happen once.
This is my shot. Yeah.
And every time I've been offered a job,
I've always felt I'm not ready for this.
I don't think I can do this.
But there's just something about someone presenting you a challenge, Gus.
And I'm sure you're like this where you think, I don't think I can do it.
But that guy over there thinks that I can.
And I just don't want to disappoint him.
Because back in those days, every decision about, you know,
challenges and opportunities that came my way, it was all men
that were offering them to me.
And when you have people believing in you, that is a challenge in itself.
It's just like, I don't want to disappoint you.
See, middle child syndrome. Yeah. Here we go.
Going back to what you said at the start, you know, a grade student
doing tick in all the boxes. Yeah.
So that life, all of a sudden you're up and about and things are going well for you.
What are your sort of thoughts moving forward?
Do you always think you're going to stay in the magazine game?
Do you start thinking about telly?
Do you start thinking about other stuff or will you just sort of,
you know, head down, bum up?
The funny thing about tripling the circulation of a magazine in four years
when you're working for Fairfax Media, there was this other magazine company
on the other side of town run by Kerry Packer.
And he had the Woman's Weekly and Cleo and the Bulletin.
They were the Vegas strip magazines.
Like Fairfax was always considered Granny Fairfax,
whereas Bright, Shiny, Channel 9, ACP,
that was the gold standard in media in this city.
And when you triple the circulation, people like Kerry Packer tend to
want to know something about you.
And I was invited to a lunch.
I had no intention of working for Kerry Packer.
Why didn't you have an intention to work for him?
Who would want to work with a guy that's got a reputation like that?
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it was a fierce...
But you haven't met him yet, right?
I hadn't. And the only reason I said yes,
because I got a call actually from his number two guy, Trevor Kennedy,
who very sadly only recently passed away.
And Trevor and I had a great chat on the phone.
And he said to me, I'm interested.
Kerry's interested in you coming and running Cleo.
And I said to him, I don't want to run Cleo.
I'm very happy at Dolly.
Like, you know, we're we're off and running.
And why would I walk away from all of this?
Like, I want to enjoy this for a while.
And he said, yeah, but, you know, Cleo is a landmark
magazine in Australian publishing.
And, you know, it's time to move on from the teenage stuff.
And and, you know, I want you to come to lunch with Kerry.
And what would you do with Cleo?
And part of my strategy that was really successful for Dolly was
taking that same passion that I had for Dolly for all of those years,
which takes a long time to go away when something has been
so significant in your life as a teenager.
I thought, if I can get those all of those new readers
to just hang around Dolly another six or 12 months,
more than they otherwise would, because they're enjoying the content so much.
I can delay their transition to Cleo.
And so Cleo's numbers were falling
because I was keeping them at Dolly for longer than was the natural transition time.
And, you know, so I knew I'm going to have to undo all the cleverness
that I've just applied to the market.
But, you know, when I thought about Cleo, I thought
that would be an amazing challenge.
And I said to Trevor, gee, there's a lot in there.
I'd fix up very quickly.
And I, you know, running off at the mouth, started telling him.
And so he said, this is just an initial chat.
Yeah. And you're giving him solutions.
I know. I know. Idiot. Right.
But I also thought, I don't I'm not going to take this job,
but I'm going to show you how smart I am.
I couldn't resist.
Your confidence was up as well.
It was. Well, you know, things were going well.
And so he said, look, just come and meet Kerry.
That's all I'm asking.
Surely you want to meet him.
And I thought about it and I thought, could I really hold my head high
in decades to come and say to my grandchildren,
which I don't have yet, but, you know, one day, they're coming.
You know, how could I say to them, your grandmother
never went and met Kerry Packer when she had the opportunity.
And I just thought, I'm just going to go and meet him.
And I'm going to take mental notes so that every dinner party
I ever go to from here, I can say, well, he ate this.
And then he talked about that.
And then he said this about this person.
And this was the gossip.
Because I thought I'll be everybody's favorite dinner party guest.
So anyway, Trevor gave me an address down at Darling Harbor
at a time when Darling Harbor was still a bit of a swamp.
And Trevor gave me this address.
And when I arrived at the address, I didn't see a restaurant.
But like I was presuming, there was just an a bit of sort of concrete
asphalt and on a big block with cyclone fencing around it
and the whirring blades of the Channel 9 news helicopter.
Sitting in the middle of this big vacant lot,
ready and waiting, I discovered, to whisk me up to Mr.
Packer's summer residence at Palm Beach. Yeah.
And I'd never been in a helicopter before at this point in my life.
I don't know what this is, but I'm going with it.
And I just got in the chopper and decided to enjoy the view with,
in fact, the very same pilot who went on to give Mr.
Packer one of his very own kidneys.
So I'm so glad at that point in my life, I didn't know
that was part of his job description in the employment of Kerry Packer.
Anyway, we landed down at Palm Beach.
And I write in the book about an incredibly embarrassing episode
that happened when the helicopter landed.
And I'll leave that for anyone who reads the book.
But let's just say it involved me and a whole lot of seagull poo.
And I was that was the state I was in when I met Kerry Packer
for the very first time.
And I also looked like I had wet myself.
And the only thing that gave me confidence that day was that morning,
my very best friend from school had rung.
And she was one of the only people that knew I was going to this lunch
with Kerry Packer, apart from mum and dad.
And she said to me, you're OK.
And I said, you kidding? I've been throwing up all morning.
And she said to him, don't be ridiculous, you've already got a job.
Let him try and impress you.
And if that thinking fails, you just do what I do.
Just think of him naked.
And let's just say, again, I write about this in the book.
A moment happened when I met Kerry Packer
that almost became a moment where I didn't even have to think of him naked.
And I'll leave it there.
Yeah, it's great.
You'll enjoy that story.
So you're happy with Dolly.
Everything's going well.
Selling more than ever before.
Excited, your own team.
Everything's going well.
Yeah. You then go up on the chopper.
He obviously does his magic.
So what happens then?
I've never met charisma like I experienced sitting on that huge terrace
overlooking Palm Beach in that beautiful home
that the Packer family has up at Palm Beach.
And I just got completely mesmerized by the charisma of this man.
And I think he also knew that he was talking to a kid from Campbelltown
who, when it came to negotiating anything
that, you know, required the confidence to say what I was worth.
I was a joke and he actually felt really sorry for me.
And at one point, when I realized halfway through,
oh, my God, I came here not to accept a job and he's now talking me into it.
Can I actually say to him at this point, you know what?
I actually don't want your job.
I'm just here to check you out.
And can I get a lift back in that chopper?
Because I figure that chopper was gone for dust
if I was not going to accept this job.
And, you know, after long negotiations,
I didn't actually say yes on that day.
I said, I've really got to think about this.
He knew it though, didn't he?
Yeah, well, I didn't know the way the media worked in those days.
And I said to him, can I get back to you on Monday?
I just I need to talk to my dad.
And it's a huge shift for me because that job is all I've ever known.
Yeah. And all you ever really wanted to.
Yeah. And I've been there for, you know, close on seven years.
Well, blow me down.
I was meant to have lunch with dad on that Monday
because he was going to be my wise counsel.
Like I would talk it through with him.
And dad called me on the Monday morning and he said, darling,
have you seen the paper?
Yeah. And I said, no, why?
And he said, well, it's in the paper that you're about to become
the new editor of Clio.
And I just thought, you bastards, you just know that you're dealing
with a very naive young girl who doesn't know the way this whole thing works.
You forced my hand because I now have to go to work today
and face all of my staff. Yeah.
But as it happened, well, five of my staff came with me.
Yeah. So I raided the joint.
You got the job of the job that's in your DNA.
You took it to the next level and then you took all the goodies with you.
Yeah. And I stayed at Clio for 10 years.
And Kerry was the most incredible boss.
He was so like he said to me at one point,
because I said, I've I've managed to live a really autonomous life
at Fairfax, because none of those guys that ran Fairfax had any clue
what I was doing at Dolly that was working.
And it was just like, don't anybody interfere.
Just let it keep going, because whatever she's doing is working,
making a lot of money for us.
So I led a very autonomous life.
And I said to him, I just don't think you're that kind of boss.
I think you're going to be breathing down my neck the whole time.
But he said to me, why the fuck would I breathe down your neck?
I'm going to pay you a shitload of money.
So you do the job. OK.
So I always knew that if I didn't deliver,
I would be out of my ear quicker than I realised that I'd been picked up
and thrown on the street. OK.
But it's amazing how that keeps you focused, Gus. Yeah.
But that's the first time you've had that type of leadership, though.
You pretty much had run your own show there for so long.
You know, I have always wanted to live a life where I get those challenges,
where I just think, can I do this?
I don't think I can do this.
And in the early stages of Cleo, the first thing I did was drop the centrefold,
which had been going for 13 years.
That's what it was.
Everyone knew it as the magazine with the centrefold.
But I just thought, like any great joke, because it was, you know,
different terminology these days.
But it was a me too moment for women where they were saying,
look, you guys can have your playboys and your penthouses
and you can ogle over women's bodies.
Well, the times are changing.
We can now ogle over men's bodies because we're in charge of our own bodies now.
Because that was the message at Cleo.
But I thought, like, you know, it was always done with a beautifully
cheeky sense of humour, that centrefold.
And it never kind of felt exploitative in the way that female centrefolds might.
But I just thought after 13 years, you know, it's time.
But the circulation faltered in that first year.
And so I really...
Did you get some heat for that then?
Yeah, there was...
I felt that Kerry was watching.
Trevor knew to sort of, I think, probably keep Kerry at a distance
and just say, let her find her feet.
And so I felt supported, even though I felt
that hot breath down the back of the neck.
It was just implied.
But I was there for 10 years.
And I'm proud to say this incredible team that that we became at Cleo
drove that magazine to be the number one
selling women's lifestyle magazine per capita in the world.
And this, you know, it wasn't because every other magazine
we were up against, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Cosmo, Elle,
all of those magazines were born in boardrooms and in London and New York.
Cleo was a wholly owned Aussie product.
And yet we were the little battler that got to number one.
And I loved that.
You know, I'm a proud Australian.
And so you should.
Yeah. So Dolly and Cleo were uniquely Australian products.
And both of them, by the time I finished at Cleo after 10 years,
both of them had international editions.
So I love the fact that, you know, our titles had pushed back the other way,
which was great. I love it.
So for your situation there, everything's going so well.
Telly, right, that becomes a huge part of your life
and still is a huge part of your life.
So how is that transition?
We've heard the transition from Dolly.
So what's the transition now from Cleo?
Well, blow me down if Pete and I don't, by this stage,
have one healthy child on the ground and I was pregnant with our second.
I went on maternity leave, but I also said to my boss,
you know, I've been doing this for 10 years.
I really want to take time out to be a mum
because I've worked so hard all of my adult life and you didn't get your trip to.
I never got my trip to Europe.
Never got that. Although Kerry Packard did send me to New York on my first trip
overseas after I'd been there about 18 months.
He was looking to buy into the American market.
And Trevor turned up in my office one day and said, what are you doing on Saturday?
And this was like a Thursday.
And I said, I don't know.
And he said, Kerry wants to fly you to New York to work with Gloria Steinem.
He's thinking of thinking of buying her
magazine so he can get into the American market.
So two days later, I was flying to New York to advise Gloria Steinem,
the greatest feminist of the 20th century and now the 21st.
So I went over there to work with her and they fly down the back on those
occasions or I didn't. Are you going and turning left?
I got to turn left and they put me up in the Plaza Hotel.
You know, one of my favorite movies,
one of my favorite romcoms is Barefoot in the Park, Jane Fonda and Robert Redford.
And I was staying in the Plaza Hotel.
So let me tell you that little girl who was meant to go backpacking in Europe
very calmly as I was shown to room 707 in the Plaza Hotel.
I walked in. I was shown how to work the TV.
This is the bathroom.
There's the menu if you want to order room service.
Is there anything else, Miss Wilkinson?
No, that's fine. Thank you very much.
And I counted to ten after he'd closed the door.
And I got up on that bed and I jumped on it and I screamed my lungs out.
I just thought, if you wait, sometimes other things can happen.
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And let's get back into the episode.
And you made some good calls all the way through and people keeping backing you,
which is what I love it.
That's the theme that comes through your book.
And it also comes through this chat is that you never thought you were quite good
enough, you gave it an absolute go, you were good enough.
And then you've brought people along on this journey with you.
Yeah. So how hard was it to move away and go to telly?
Well, so so I said to my bosses, look,
I want to take 12 months off and I just don't feel it's fair for somebody else to
come in and sort of have a holding pattern until I get back from maternity leave.
So I'm going to leave, Cleo.
I don't know if you'll have a job for me in 12 months time.
And if you don't, that's fine, because Pete and I, you know,
we want to have a couple more kids and we'll just we'll see how that goes.
But I'm very happy to hand all of this over to the lap of the gods at the moment.
And if you still think, you know, you want me in 12 months time, great.
And if you don't, I will accept that as well.
Is that absolutely the truth?
Because that is God's honor.
Because for me, it's like, of course,
they're going to like in 12 months time, if you're available,
they're going to hope to get you because you're going to have other options.
Did you not feel that?
Well, Kerry had asked me on a couple of occasions to edit the weekly.
And I just didn't feel I was grown up enough.
It's just like getting back to meatloaf again.
Exactly. That's where the adults go.
And I don't know that I'm that yet.
So I thought, you know, maybe he'll offer that to me down the track.
But, you know, people have jobs.
It's just not like, OK, well, Lisa's back.
We'll get rid of that person.
And I also didn't want to be that person.
And as it turned out, six months into my
maternity leave, I got a call from a guy by the name of Brian Walsh,
who I'd known as the 2SM publicity director back in the, you know,
the good old days of 2SM and the hit network as it was known then.
He said to me, Lisa, we've just started up
Foxtel and I want to bring back a show called Beauty and the Beast.
And I'm wondering if you know it.
And I said, oh, yeah, my mum used to watch it
because it had been on and off Australian TV for almost 40 years.
And I said to him, you know, it's I really like that show because
it's got a real diversity of women on there, you know, who all sorts of ages,
all sorts of backgrounds and, you know, they're wise old heads.
And he said, yeah, I'd like you to be one of our regular panellists.
And I thought, it's funny, I've done lots of interviews over the years,
but I'd never look straight down the barrel of a camera, which is a big black hole.
It is nothing more than that.
And you've got to imagine that you're talking to a person.
There's a skill I don't have.
It was only a six week series.
And he said, would you be game enough to give it a go?
And I just thought, what's the worst that can happen?
I can be terrible at it. That's OK.
I know I can edit magazines, so I've got my skill.
I'm also a very good receptionist.
I can still do my shorthanded typing.
So I've got some runs on the board that I can always go back and rely on.
I actually thought I would be terrible
because I had no clue and I was also sitting at a desk with absolute veterans
like Jeannie Little and Ida Butros.
And the guy who was the beast, you know, Brian had said to me
when I said to him, because like John Laws, Darren Hinch, Eric Boehm, Stuart Wagstaff,
you know, male icons of Australian television had sat in that chair.
And I said, so so who's the beast?
And he said to me, do you ever listen to 2UE?
And I said, well, not if I can help it.
I'm more an FM girl, Brian.
And he said, oh, there's a guy called Stan Zemanek.
And I said, oh, no, I don't don't know him.
And he said he's on late at night.
And I said, oh, not that right wing shock jock.
He said, yeah, that's the one.
Anyway, I turned up on the first day and
Stan and I, it turned out, was sharing a dressing room.
So, you know, he would go in and get changed and then come out.
And then I would go in and get changed.
And we got talking and he was actually a really lovely man.
And I worked out, oh, I see.
That's the that's the bluster that happens when the microphone goes on.
You become this character.
So on the very first day, Brian came down on the floor.
There's, you know, Jeannie, Maureen, Ida Butros, veterans.
And Brian said, how's everyone feeling?
And I just said, Brian, it's a privilege to be sitting here.
Thank you so much for the elegant, graceful,
beautiful, measured Ida.
And then Brian looked over at Stan and I, who had not said a word,
looked like a couple of rabbits caught in headlights.
And he said, what the hell's wrong with you two?
And Stan and I just looked at each other
and basically said at the same time, we've never done this before.
And he looked at us both and sort of
stepped back half a pace and he said, oh, for Christ's sake, get over yourself.
It's only television.
And it was the best advice for someone who ended up making the second part of her
career about television, because TV is a really weird beast.
Cameras are very strange things.
It says nothing about you as a human being, whether you're good on TV or not.
It just means that you can fake really well that you're talking to a person in
that big black hole, which kind of doesn't say great things about you
if you stop and think about it for too long.
But it just meant that I was relaxed from that very first day.
And also, Stan was good at needling and I quite enjoyed the banter with him.
And I felt very honored to be in the presence
of women who could teach me a lot about being in a TV studio.
It was just a great introduction because, you know, Brian said to me,
you know, the second thing he said after that, he said, oh, for Christ's sake,
no one's watching.
It's just like it's only Foxtel, so it's not like anyone's going to see this.
So there were just sort of a couple of
comfort pillows that were placed around me in those early days.
And the series kept getting renewed and then Channel 10 bought it.
So I had this really soft introduction to being on TV.
And I went back and did a bit of magazine
consultancy and I was getting offers
internationally to work on magazines overseas.
So I had this really lovely mix of things that I was doing.
I was doing a bit of radio.
So I just never went back to full time
editing because I preferred just having a mix of things that I was doing.
And then in 2003, I got a call from a guy called Adam Boland,
who was this wunderkind of breakfast television who had shaken the whole market
up and he was doing this absolutely raw version of what breakfast television could
be. And he said to me, I want you to come on as a social commentator.
And I said, sure, Adam, what's a social commentator?
I think he invented that phrase.
Is that somebody who, you know, can't get enough gigs to have an actual full time
job? And he said, no, I just want you to come
on and talk about the news of the day.
And he said, but I want you to come on with your husband.
And I said to him, no, no, I don't need to have domestics on national television.
Yeah. But as it happened that day, Steve Price was at our house for lunch.
He'd just taken over the breakfast slot
at Tuye and Pete was working at Tuye and he invited him over for lunch.
And Steve and I used to have, you know,
quite good banter with each other, didn't agree on some things, agreed on others.
And I said, but I tell you what, Steve Price is sitting at our place having lunch
right now. I think I could do it with Steve really well.
And so I just started doing that.
And then Adam asked me, would you mind filling in
for Mel when she's on holidays and started doing that?
And then they decided they wanted to do a weekend version of the show.
And I got to host that.
And by 2007, we'd all been watching very
closely the sort of unfolding drama that was happening over at the Today Show
because Sunrise had been so brilliantly run and the audiences had connected with it.
And Today Show was in a bit of trouble.
And I think there were five women in succession that had sat next to Carl.
And I got a phone call out of the blue
saying, would you be interested?
And through Adam and through working with Mel Doyle in particular,
I got this great love of breakfast television.
And, you know, it's an extraordinary thing to be invited into people's homes
when they wake up, when we are all at our most raw, our most unshowered, unshaven,
Yeah, it's it's really a time of day when it's a very special thing to invite anybody
into that environment, because people don't invite anyone at breakfast time
because we're looking for missing socks.
There's a missing library book.
Someone hasn't made the school lunches.
It's the mechanics of being a family.
So if you are a warm presence in people's lives, wow,
you get to tell them what's been going on while they've been asleep.
And you get to interview prime ministers.
And I just thought, I'm going to get offered this once in my life.
Another one. Keeps happening.
But I was leaving the number one rating
far and away, the number one rating breakfast show.
And I knew a lot of people would think I was crazy.
But I also thought Mel Doyle's got a job for life.
She's not going anywhere.
And nor should she look at the success of the Mel and Koshy brand.
Like that was one word, Mel and Koshy.
Yeah, there's Natalie Barr is the longtime newsreader.
If Mel decides that she wants to move on, Nat is the obvious choice.
If I'm really lucky, I'm third in line here.
And, you know, I wasn't 25.
And I thought I can sit around here hoping and, you know, praying,
but not even hoping and praying because it's a huge thing to take on that hosting
role. Of course, like I'd seen it up close, but I hadn't sat in the chair as,
you know, you're it. Yeah.
But I just thought,
I it probably won't work.
And hey, it's only television.
And if, you know, I've got a husband that loves me, I've got a family
that are healthy and well, and I'm just going to give this a shot.
And I'd been introduced to Carl at the Logies by Larry Emder.
There's a couple of loose cannons right there, Larry and Carl.
Talk to me, especially at the bar at the Logies.
And it had been a very short space of time
between me being quietly offered the job and the Logies.
And if there's one place you do not want to be on the day the story breaks,
unbeknownst to you, that you've just been offered,
you know, the most talked about role on
Australian television, that of sitting next to Carl Stefanovic at the Today Show.
You don't want that day to be the Logies.
That was the day that it broke.
And I was there as a guest of Channel 7 on the sunrise table.
So that was the day on the competition.
Oh, my God. It was just so uncomfortable.
And as you know, at the Logies, when the ad break happens,
that's your time to run out to the loo and you've got to get back before the ad
break finishes, otherwise you get locked out.
Well, I got locked out and I looked over towards the bar and there was a group of
people and I saw the lovely Larry Ender and I thought there's a friendly face
because I just the whole night I've been keeping my head down.
Don't look at me. Don't anyone look at me.
Yeah, I'm not telling you if I've been offered the Today Show.
So I walked over towards Larry and he said, well, aren't you the most talked
about girl in the room? I said, oh, Larry, don't I don't want to talk about it.
And he said, that's OK.
I think you want to talk to this guy.
And he slapped the guy on the back.
He turned around. It was Carl.
And anyway, I missed a couple of loo breaks because we just started chatting.
And I'd seen him and I just thought he was a bit informed, but I just thought
there's something there that's really charming.
And I also knew he was a very good journo.
He was great on the ground.
Whenever I saw him go out to stories, he could do it up there with the very best.
And I didn't have that training at that point.
And I just thought, there's someone I can learn from again.
So I just took a leap of faith and thought, yeah, I'm going to give it a go.
And the rest is history in terms of a nice little chunk there.
Yeah. Let me stop you for a moment, because
people listening to the podcast series would have already heard from Carl.
And he's a friend of mine and someone that I enjoy his company.
He speaks about you so fondly in the podcast where he was like
trying to work out whether or not he could do the job himself.
And he said, as soon as Lisa came around, she gave me permission to be myself.
And the connection was just pretty much straight away.
He went, oh, at least I've got someone sensible next to me that can do all that
stuff and I can sort of be myself.
And he said, allowing me to be myself ended up making me better to do the sensible
stuff as well. And that's why he loved that relationship between you two so much.
That's lovely to hear.
And I do feel that we both gave ourselves
permission to be ourselves because we just liked each other straight away.
And over the years, we always knew at the very heart of it, we liked each other.
We could challenge each other.
We didn't agree on everything politically.
And we would have great discussions about where things are up to in politics.
And we would also, you know, when we were doing solo interviews,
we would, you know, if one of us thought of a question while the other one was
doing an interview, you'd quickly, quickly write something down.
So that we all teamwork and chemistry.
Yeah, we always supported each other.
But we could make each other laugh as well.
But we could also surprise each other.
And a role like that, when, you know,
just as everyone at home watching is at their most raw,
when you're getting up at three o'clock in the morning and you've got to hit the
ground running, there are particular challenges to doing those hours.
I mean, like every shift worker listening to this, just tiredness alone.
And, you know, we would often swap stories
at the desk about some grumpy mood that you were in last night and you had a fight
with your partner and, you know, it was just part of sharing the experience of
doing those hours and the intensity of the microscope that you are under doing
breakfast TV, because it's like no other slot on television, the scrutiny that you
were under. So you do feel like you're part of a very small team of people going
through the same experience and like any marriage, because it is,
you know, that was my work marriage.
You want to keep feeling like you can keep pulling back the layers of an onion.
And really, right up until my very last day with Carl,
we could still, you know, reach in and do great stuff.
We never lost that.
How long did it take you to go from where
today's show was to the juggernaut it became?
And can you remember the first time you
became number one after taking the job on, because you were part of the seven
family and all of a sudden, as soon as you went across to nine,
there's someone at seven going, ah, we've missed an opportunity there.
We don't want to move Mel on because she's awesome.
And that's awesome, too.
Lisa's going to make that show so much better.
So how long did it take?
We really started building from that very first year and we could feel it.
And so I joined in May of 2007 and by the following year, it was Good Friday,
which is always a bit of a tricky one to really declare, hey,
we won the Good Friday ratings because a lot of people are away on holidays.
So the numbers aren't it works your way, you're going to shout and scream.
Hey, as Carl called me on the on the Saturday morning after the Good Friday,
and he was over the moon, he said, we won.
So we won the ratings on one day.
And he said to me, Dal, they can never take away from us that on one occasion we won
the breakfast TV wars and then we started winning a bit more and a bit more
and a bit more and it just kept building.
And we had a brilliant executive producer
called Tom Malone, who now runs all of Nine's radio network,
who's remained a very dear friend of mine.
And he's one of the cleverest bosses I've ever worked under.
I learned so much from him.
And he was great at rallying the team.
And Carl listened to him, which was always a bonus.
You needed an executive producer that Carl listened to.
I was always the good girl.
Middle child syndrome yet again, rearing its ugly head.
But just every year it just kept growing and growing more of that charisma that Carl
had got a chance to to rear its very entertaining head.
So in I think it was 2010, there was the infamous morning after the Logies episode.
And the funny thing about that is when we went to air that morning,
I thought I was going to have to host the show on my own because no one had seen Carl.
And when he turned up, he was like everyone was scrambling.
So the music was starting to play for the opening credits of the show.
Mark Ferguson was doing the news out of Sydney and I was there on my own.
And we were having issues with Mark.
He couldn't hear me. Carl had turned up.
I sort of breathed out for a moment, but didn't get a chance to talk to him
because people were hovering with mics and all of the stuff that you have to wear
in order to be able to talk to the control room and hear what they're saying
to you and down the line. And then he sat down and he just put his
hand on mine as if to say, I'm here. I got you.
And the funny thing over time is you can always without even looking at Carl,
each of us could tell who's going to speak now.
We could just feel each other in our peripheral vision.
And I could feel that he was breathing in.
I thought, oh, he's going to pick up and say good morning.
But that wasn't exactly what he said.
What I heard in my peripheral vision, if you can mix up the senses there.
Well, good morning to you.
My first thought was, is he still on his way up the mountain
or are we coming down the other side now or are we sitting at the summit?
And it was only through him, sadly, continuing to try to talk
that I could get a reading on where he was.
And I think quite literally at that point, we were just a couple of meters from the
summit and then for the rest of the three and a half hours, we were coming down
And I have to say, just the mere fact that he said to me 73 times that morning,
how beautiful I was, is not proof in and of itself that he was drunk.
I mean, it goes a long way.
Maybe the first couple were.
And then after that, it was just what he
wanted to say every morning and didn't have the confidence.
Maybe he was very funny that morning.
We could do a whole podcast just on maybe not that morning, but certainly all the fun
that you guys have had and a lot of the big stories that you broke as well
together and and like you said, after doing 11 years of brekkie radio with
Maddie Johns and M.G., you know, there were moments there when Maddie was
asleep through songs or would play an extra song to give him an extra few
minutes to gear up.
And that's what stopped him doing brekkie radio in the end for Maddie Johns.
You know, he loved doing it.
But if he could do it from seven thirty to nine, it would be perfect.
We always joke that we're actually a
night time show that's on at breakfast.
And we often wondered, should we do a night time show instead when we're sick of all this?
So everything's going well, beautifully there at Channel 9.
And I think it's well documented.
I think most people who know you would understand that you left Channel 9.
And there was some drama around that.
Do you talk to that now?
Can you talk to that now?
Why something so successful you decided to walk away from?
One of the reasons that I wrote the book is that a narrative built up around my
reasons for leaving Channel 9 and joining the project that wasn't true.
And there was a lot of click bait around at the time.
And I could have got down in the mud and tried to set the record straight.
You can lose a lot of skin doing that and you start to play into.
A tit for tat game, and I didn't want to do any of that.
I just thought I've moved on.
I wish everyone at The Today Show all the very best.
I became the longest serving Today Show female co-host in its history.
And I wear that with such pride because every single day I turned up at that show
was a privilege and so few people get that opportunity.
And it was never lost on me every day.
The opportunities that you get in that role and you get to meet so many
Australians and you get to interview prime ministers and you're there when
breaking news happens like the morning Michael Jackson died,
the day Julia Gillard became our first prime minister.
Carl and I hosted the wedding of William and Kate.
It just it blew my mind that I was in this position.
But the project came along at around
about the same time as I was talking to Channel Nine about my contract.
And basically the decision was made for me.
One of the reasons of the many reasons I
wrote my book is I just thought I want to set the record straight because it's not
a simple you can't reduce down to a simple headline, a simple cheap headline,
which most of them were why I left and what happened.
And I wanted to make it clear in the book
how grateful I was for the relationship
that Carl and I had because it was a we were a great team.
We knew we were a great team because we were enjoying it.
But just towards the end, things were
happening that just weren't making it an ideal place for me.
And so going to the project, it felt like the right move to make.
And it's that thing of the roller coaster of my life, of being in the media.
And I just thought I will learn something new.
I want to start doing more long form journalism.
And had I not made that move, I would never have got the phone call from
Brittany Higgins, you know, in many ways, that story.
Has been the greatest privilege of my
journalistic career to have a young woman like that in such a vulnerable situation.
Trust me so completely with her story.
And since the story went to air,
you know, the way things have unfolded, I've I've seen government up close
and it's not attractive at all. Yeah.
You know, all the backgrounding that that went on.
I always think that things happen for a reason.
And I can genuinely say I walk away from
the time that I had with Carl with nothing but love in my heart and great
affection for him and for having been a part of a success story.
Well, he certainly feels the same way.
There's no there's no doubt about that.
From my point of view, I just sort of miss you, I suppose.
You know, like, I know you're on the project in Hamilton, but just in my life,
it's just a different time of day.
You know, I'm an early to Betty and all that sort of jazz.
So that's not my watching stuff.
But let me get to the end.
I am a chatterbox.
But I love you being a chatterbox, which is great.
And all our listeners would love that was where I wrote the book.
I just thought I've had too many great things happen in my life that
I've almost lived it in an out of body experience.
I just think these things keep happening
to me and I've got to tell people about them because it's it's I've lived a very
strange, awesome, incredible life.
Yeah. The other thing, I think at some stage
you're going to have to start believing that you're quite good at whatever you
whatever you do and the people that put you in these positions, they're not idiots.
You know what I mean? So at some stage, if you could lock that in.
I'm coming back to you for career advice.
Yeah. If someone comes up and says, I think you should do something, just do it.
Yeah. The Fast Five Questions, which end our podcast.
Have you got a favorite quote?
Have you got something that you live your life by?
In the book, because I collect quotes, I just I love other people's
beautiful use of the English language and wisdom.
And so at the start of every chapter, I've put I think there's 38 chapters in the book.
Or did I get into the 40s? Maybe I got into the 40s.
Yeah, I did get in. I think I got to 45 chapters.
And at the start of every chapter, I've put one of my 45 most favorite.
But there's one that I think probably sums up so much of my life.
And it's the way I've lived it.
And that is listen to your gut instincts because they are your guardian angels.
Favorite holiday destination?
Probably anywhere in Queensland.
Really? I love Queensland.
Carl said the same thing.
I thought you were going to say New York or you're going to say the Maldives or
the Malfi Coast or something like I love all of those destinations.
I love going to New York to see Hugh and Deb.
Yeah. But they're all kind of a bit racy for me.
If I want to breathe out and just want to be,
I always find because Pete and I had our honeymoon in Noosa.
And I probably go back to Noosa, find myself there at least once a year.
And I just I love walking through that national park.
I love going for a swim at the beach there and just off Hastings Street.
I love the restaurant strip.
And, you know, it just to me, that just that's like Christmas.
That was the first family holiday I ever went on.
And we put the car on the back of the train at Central Station.
Really? It came out at Mwillem Bar.
You got a free car wash.
We went in Dad's blue Kingswood.
And then we drove up the Queensland coast and we stopped at Noosa.
And I remember Dad driving down Hastings Street.
And there was still vacant blocks of land in Hastings Street at that time.
I would have loved to scaffold a couple of those.
And down the end was the caravan park.
And there were women walking around in string tanned through bikinis.
Like it was a scene out of Woodstock.
This was the early 70s.
And I just remember thinking, this is Nirvana.
And I've never lost that.
Well, Carl said exactly the same thing, said Noosa.
Favorite book, except you can't say your own.
Hands down, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.
Oh, yeah. So many people.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Sydney Poitier.
The lessons that I learned as a little girl growing up in Campbelltown and
understanding the injustice of racial vilification and but also
how families should work and
just that speech that Spencer Tracy, I'm going to get tears.
Spencer Tracy delivers at the end.
Can you quote it?
I wish I could do it justice.
But it's about love.
And it doesn't matter where you find it, but it's about finding it.
Isn't that funny?
Last question, and this might get you emotional as well.
Very lucky to have a sponsor like Shore and Partners.
Earl and I are just both very beautiful people.
So every guest gets ten thousand dollars to give to their favorite charity.
So who would you like to give it to?
And if you can give our listeners a bit
of an understanding where ten thousand dollars, what that will do for the
charity or what they will do with the money?
Well, I hope I don't lose my ambassadorships with a number of charities that I'm
involved with, Friend Hollows Foundation, National Breast Cancer, Breast Cancer
Trials, Butterfly Foundation, Sydney Children's Hospital.
I love all of them equally.
It's a bit like loving children.
But on that note of children, it's not a charity that I'm specifically involved
with, but I think right now, after two years of the pandemic and a very
complicated world that our children are growing up in,
I would love to give the money to Kids Helpline.
I think that they are such an incredible service at the very front line when kids
often don't feel like they've got anyone in their life that they can trust,
that they can turn to in a real moment of need.
And without proper funding, those calls can go unanswered and they don't get
anywhere near the funding that they need or deserve or that our kids deserve.
And I would love the money to go to Kids Helpline.
They're an extraordinary organisation.
They certainly are.
I know them well and we'll make sure that
ten thousand goes to them and let them know that that's what you wanted.
So it's a pleasure.
And like I said, we could have talked, I think, for a lot longer than we have.
But thanks so much, Lise.
I know you're very busy.
I know you've got a lot on.
I think the book for me gave me a bit of an insight into someone that, like I said,
off the top, that is much loved and respected in this country.
And so go out there and buy a copy.
Thank you, Gus. So lovely to see you.
Good on you, Lise.
Well, that was Lisa Wilkinson.
What I loved about that chat is that she
never quite felt confident enough to take on the next opportunity.
I was wondering why and I asked her in there why she kept on getting all these
opportunities. She never thought she was right for it.
Well, she's an amazing lady and I hope you enjoyed it.
Coming up next on Not an Overnight Success is Ian Roberts.
Ian Roberts was one of the toughest guys in footy.
He's currently also known for being the
only openly gay professional rugby league player in Australia.
Ian has lived a very interesting and eye opening life.
He's had some incredible highs,
like representing his country and being the voice for LGBTIQ plus people.
And he's faced some extreme challenges in his time as well, like not being accepted
by his own family, the discrimination he faced for decades and the brain injuries
he has suffered as a result of his career.
If you've enjoyed this podcast,
we ask that you share it with someone who you think might get something out of it.
You can also subscribe to this podcast
on whichever platform you're listening to right now so that our episodes update as
they are released. A big thank you to Shaw and Partners
Financial Services, who have generously supported this podcast and also donated
$10,000 to the charity of choice of each of our guests to thank them for their time.
Shaw and Partners are an Australian investment and wealth management firm
who manage over $28 billion of assets under advice.
With seven offices around Australia,
Shaw and Partners act for and on behalf of individuals, institutions,
corporates and charities. For more info,
you can check out their website at shawandpartners.com.au.
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