A Huge Week Speaking Across Melbourne and Regional Victoria

Melbourne & all of Vic has been delivering big time lately.

It’s been a pleasure getting down there regularly and connecting with such a huge range of next level people and organisations. There’s been a heap of enquiries coming through and somehow it feels like they’re throwing darts at my schedule and continually landing on the exact dates when I’m either already in Victoria or available to head down.

These three events in a single week were a perfect example.

Let me explain...

It started with La Trobe University

La Trobe University got in touch a couple of months earlier about bringing me down to Melbourne for one of their P&C Connect events.

Their Director of Wellbeing and Inclusion, Stephen, gave us some really useful context around what they were hoping to achieve. Their People and Culture team is made up of around 60 people working across areas including recruitment, leadership, wellbeing, workplace relations, injury management and business partnering.

As you can imagine, they deal with some pretty heavy stuff.

Difficult disclosures from staff, high workloads, organisational change and supporting other people through challenging periods. Stephen explained that while the team spends so much time supporting people across the university, they hadn’t had much recently that was focused specifically on them and their own wellbeing.

They wanted something dynamic and real. Something that would make people think about how they were coping, what was actually important to them and what they could do to better look after themselves and the people around them.

That’s my kinda session.

At the time, I didn’t have anything else booked around the date. August was actually supposed to be a slightly quieter month after a massive run of corporate events throughout July.

That changed pretty quickly.

I’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time speaking at conferences and events across Melbourne and Victoria lately, and this trip was about to become a much bigger one than originally planned.

If you’re looking at bringing me in for an event, you can read more about my speaking at conferences and events across Melbourne and Victoria here.

Then Powercor called

About a week before the La Trobe event, we received an enquiry from Powercor.

The original message was pretty simple:

“Roadshow throughout Victoria for multiple locations.”

I’ve done plenty of tours with organisations over the years, but calling it a roadshow made it sound a lot cooler.

After a few conversations we started getting an idea of what “multiple locations” actually meant.

Their Health and Wellbeing Lead, Jess, was looking for someone who could connect with their crews around mental health in a way that felt real and relatable.

Not textbook frameworks or corporate clichés. Their crews are straight up, can sniff out BS pretty quickly and will switch off the second something feels overly polished or theoretical.

That works perfectly with the way I speak.

Jess then dropped this into the conversation:

“I’d be looking at around 20 sessions throughout Victoria, is this something that is possible for Luke?”

Now that’s what I call a roadshow!

The plan ended up being more than 20 talks across Powercor depots throughout Victoria, along with some online sessions. It would run across about two and a half weeks spread throughout August, September and October.

And they wanted the first session to happen only a few days after everything was confirmed.

There goes the chilled August :-)

Perfect timing in Melbourne

Sometimes things just line up perfectly.

I was already heading to Melbourne for La Trobe University on the Thursday and the first Powercor event was then booked for Friday at their Burnley depot.

Beautiful.

I was originally considering flying home for the weekend before returning to Victoria again for five days of Powercor events the following week. After chatting with my beautiful wife, we decided I was better off staying in Melbourne for the weekend and actually getting some rest.

Love my wife!

When I get home from a big speaking trip I’m usually pretty cooked. It takes me a day to decompress before I’m back bouncing around properly again, so flying home, having basically no downtime and then heading straight back to Victoria didn’t make much sense.

Staying in Melbourne gave me a chance to slow down a bit, get some good workouts in, write some blogs, update some website stuff and prepare properly for the week ahead.

A special event at La Trobe

Before I get into the Powercor week, I need to mention how great the event at La Trobe was.

Honestly, what a beautiful bunch.

Considering the roles these guys are in, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that they were such a deep, welcoming and open crew. They spend their careers dealing with people, hearing difficult stories and navigating challenging situations.

They were also incredibly open to different perspectives and conversations around their own wellbeing.

That made the room really special.

There were plenty of laughs, some deeper moments and a heap of good conversations afterwards.

Then some beautiful feedback started appearing on my Google reviews.

Gotta love that :)

The Powercor roadshow begins

The following day was the first Powercor event at their Burnley depot in Melbourne.

Most of the roadshow would eventually take me out into regional Victoria, but we kicked things off in the city.

The feedback was exceptional and I had some really solid personal conversations with people afterwards. That’s usually where you really understand whether something landed.

People hang around, open up and tell you what connected with them or what they’re going through.

Those conversations are a huge part of why I still love doing this work.

Then it was time for a little weekend reset before hitting the road.

Five days across regional Victoria

The following week looked like this:

Monday: KynetonTuesday: SheppartonWednesday: CobramThursday: EchucaFriday: Two sessions in Bendigo

A solid little tour.

Lots of driving, lots of different crews and plenty of conversations about mental health, wellbeing, perspective and actually taking some responsibility for the things within our control.

But then another event came out of nowhere...

A last minute call from the Yarra Valley

I mentioned earlier that there were three organisations involved in this particular week.

The third one didn’t even confirm until Wednesday.

Yep. The day before.

Yarra Ranges Kinders had a professional development event planned for around 100 early childhood and kindergarten educators at The Eastern Golf Club in the Yarra Valley.

Their speaker unfortunately had to pull out at the last minute, so they went looking for a Plan B.

I’ll take Plan B every time :-)

They reached out asking whether I could somehow make the Thursday afternoon work. They wanted something practical, grounded and uplifting around mental wellbeing for their frontline early education staff.

The only problem was that I was already speaking for Powercor in Echuca that morning.

It ended up working perfectly.

I still hadn’t received my exact finishing time for Echuca when the enquiry first came through. It was eventually confirmed that I’d finish there at 11am and the team at Yarra Ranges Kinders pushed their session back so I could make it.

I finished in Echuca, jumped in the car and started the three hour drive towards the Yarra Valley.

I arrived around 2:30pm.

Talk started at 2:50pm.

Plenty of time :-)

Another special room

The Kinders event was huge in terms of connection.

Around 100 educators who spend their days pouring energy into children, families and their communities.

Just like the La Trobe crew earlier in the trip, these are people who spend a huge amount of their lives looking after everybody else.

Sometimes they need reminding to check in on themselves too.

The feedback afterwards was pretty special.

Juliette, the CEO, sent this through:

“We had a ton of great feedback about your talk, powerful, inspiring, relatable and informative. It was a great way to end the conference and certainly left everyone with an up vibe which is exactly what we wanted.”

She also said:

“Our staff group can be a tough nut to crack sometimes but you did that brilliantly.”

I’ll happily take that.

Maybe their original speaker pulling out really was meant to be :-)

Thank you Melbourne and Victoria

What started as one event at La Trobe University somehow turned into La Trobe, the beginning of a massive Powercor roadshow and a last minute trip from Echuca to the Yarra Valley.

That’s the speaking world sometimes.

Things move quickly, schedules change, events appear out of nowhere and somehow it all comes together.

The best part though is still the people.

Different industries, different locations and completely different rooms, but underneath all of it people are dealing with a lot of the same stuff.

Pressure, stress, change, relationships, self doubt, their health and their head.

And sometimes they just need a bit of space to look at things differently.

Thank you Melbourne and Victoria.

You’ve been very good to me lately.

And there’s plenty more to come.