AH107 - Hayley Melidonis

In this episode of Awesome Humans, Brett welcomes Hayley Melidonis, a former global business development professional turned entrepreneur. In this engaging conversation, Hayley shares her transformative journey through travel, career changes, and personal growth. From her experiences in Japan during the Olympics to her transition into the tech industry, she reflects on how these moments shaped her identity and aspirations.

Enjoy!

What is Awesome Humans?

Awesome Humans is a podcast by Brett McCallum. Entrepreneur, author, speaker, and all-round Aussie bloke, Brett McCallum has been in the IT business with his company Virtech for over 15 years, alongside many other ventures - with a range of successes and learning experiences along the way. In this series, Brett interviews all sorts of inspiring humans from varied backgrounds to share their stories with the world. Many of Brett's guests have an entrepreneurial background and an amazing story about their successes and failures along the way.
Podcast by Podfire.

Brett McCallum (00:05.026)
Afternoon all, Brett McCallum, I'm your host at Awesome Humans, the podcast that brings together some of the most amazing people on this awesome planet of ours to tell us their stories, have a few laughs, sometimes some tears, but most of all, it's about them and who they really are. Welcome to Awesome Humans. I'm very, very excited about today's guest. It's a lady and a very old friend of mine. We represented the entrance high school in the debating team back in the late 80s. Yes, an award-winning debate team, may I say.

To the point and the school we went to we actually had to borrow people's blazers to wear to the event, but we'll go into that later Post that we went our separate ways after school and we all conquered the world. I got married went to the UK She traveled all around the world and now she's in the US She's a formal globe is global business development professional companies like uber Intel Nokia Virgin over 15 years experiencing tech and media She recently left the world of deep tech partnerships

Autonomous Mobility, Delivery Partnerships for Uber and lots of other stuff to found her own startup that culminates her passion in bringing a better social travel experience to the world. Along with all of this, she's an angel investor and advisor. She's interested in innovative and disruptive impact investment. She have a massive passion for travel and now she's about to go and change the world in that space. A very, very welcome to my friend, Hailey Meladonis. How are you? Emma, is this still Meladonis? Did you take his name or what?

Hayley (01:31.592)
Yeah, by the way, wow, and thank you. And I love that you mentioned the debate, the debating team. you didn't, was going to... If you didn't, I was going to... Yeah, I kept the name. It's just what... It's such a ridiculous name. And he wouldn't let me take his name, but yeah. By the way, it's got a really interesting meaning and maybe we can go to this later. Huh? The name. Okay, so it's a Greek name. By the way...

Brett McCallum (01:33.71)
Do you like that? That was a good one, I wrote that myself. Actually, I stole it. Hey?

Brett McCallum (01:45.869)
Bye.

Brett McCallum (01:51.896)
Wait, it wouldn't layer.

No, go now. Go now. What's the names meaning?

Hayley (02:01.238)
What I love the most about the name is that when you put it together with my first name, I'm the only person in the world with his name. So I love that. Yeah, so Haley Melodonis, if you Google me, it's me for like forever, which could be good and bad, but no, Melodonis means, so Meli means honey in Greek. And I can't believe we're talking about this at the very start. And zonis means to give, dinis, it's from dinis, from donate, right? The word donate.

Brett McCallum (02:06.958)
Clever. Yeah, I'd love it too.

Brett McCallum (02:19.832)
Okay.

Hayley (02:28.38)
And that's Latin, think, Donnie. So if you speak to a Greek person, they would be like, yeah, it means this, honey giver. But if you go, does it mean to give honey? They're like, yeah, kind of does. Like a literal translation of the name is to give honey.

Brett McCallum (02:43.534)
That's awesome. So Hayley give honey. That could be your stripper name.

Hayley (02:46.136)
Haley honey, give up wait, I'm going red

Brett McCallum (02:50.227)
Hailey, honey, give her love it. So moving forward. And what would your name have been if you had it? And the reason I asked this obviously yesterday was your one year wedding anniversary.

Is that correct? Stots. Yeah, keep melodonis. That's the... Yeah, but honey givers heaps better.

Hayley (03:04.982)
Yes, Stotz. His name is Stotz. Yes it is. Yeah, which is a bad name. It's like a simple.

It's a tongue twister. Because my mother named me with an L in my first name, I never forgave it because when you say my name, Hailey Meladonis, how much of a tongue twister is it with the Ls? There's too many Ls in it. It's quite Ellie.

Brett McCallum (03:29.058)
Eddie's very Ellie. Wow, okay. Eddie's got a couple of L's in there. Probably the same amount of L's as you. There you go. Bet you never knew that.

Hayley (03:31.596)
Brett McCallum, I might add, is Ellie as well. Let it L's in Brett McCallum.

Hayley (03:40.328)
There you go. Yeah. And fun fact, because I live in America. no, just gonna say fun fact just on name last thing. I'm in America and I'm because they spell the name Haley very differently here. H-A-L-E-Y usually. And I'm in Starbucks and I said to the guy, it's Haley with two Y's. And he looked at me a little bit weird. And then I got my cut back, you know, when he and do you what it was H-A-L-E-Y-Y. That's how he spelt my name.

Brett McCallum (03:42.4)
Okay, the way I always start my... here you go.

What's your fun fact?

Brett McCallum (04:09.376)
Love it. Hayley!

Hayley (04:09.964)
And I only said this because once your audience is probably Australian. So they know how to spell Haley the way we do.

Brett McCallum (04:17.166)
There you go. I've learned something about you I didn't know. That's awesome. I'm very happy now. We can just turn the podcast off. We're done. The way I always start this, I want to go back way to the beginning. What's your first ever memory? How far back can you go in your brain?

Hayley (04:37.6)
I can tell you my first fearful memory. no, actually maybe a lamb. No, no, there might've been one feeding a lamb in Lithgow. A little lamb. It was probably a lamb. Yes. We had a, we lived in a, yeah. Or it might've been going to bingo with my gran, with someone that looked after me and having milkshakes in those big metal milkshake cups. And again, in Lithgow, I was about two or three when we lived in Lithgow.

Brett McCallum (04:40.802)
Yeah, that'll do.

Brett McCallum (04:50.753)
Okay.

Brett McCallum (05:06.658)
Yeah.

Hayley (05:06.698)
So just the bingo hall and whoever was, I don't think it was my Nana that minded us, but you know, it's funny though, they would be early memories, yeah. But their little lamb are we fed at milk? The neighbor had a lamb, I think. That's sort of one too. Cause I was about as tall as the lamb.

Brett McCallum (05:20.673)
Love it.

I love, do remember those milkshake cups and you used to go and you get like a lime milkshake? I don't think you can do that anymore.

Hayley (05:31.608)
Probably not. So these cups were metal. They were the old fashioned, like the metal big cups.

Brett McCallum (05:32.798)
Yeah, yeah, the metal ones and the... Yeah, they're the best.

Hayley (05:40.576)
Yeah, yeah, like chocolate milkshakes that that are these days.

Brett McCallum (05:40.736)
Okay, so.

Brett McCallum (05:46.007)
Okay so we're out for the night and everyone's around, we're having drinks, everyone's chatting. What's the best ever? Go to Hayley Meladonnor's story.

Hayley (05:57.972)
you didn't give me any preparation for this, Brett. Okay, I'll tell you a recent one. I'll tell you a recent one, because there are a lot of them and Drew was there. And this is actually phenomenal, this story, because it's crazy. Here we are in Paris two years ago. And we've been on a whirlwind trip around Europe and with booking.com and all the apps you can have on your phone now, you can pretty much book things like the day before.

Brett McCallum (05:59.724)
And that's the whole point.

Brett McCallum (06:04.798)
Okay.

Hayley (06:24.086)
Right? You can book the whole trip in Europe the day before. Like I always do it, like at my last trip. Anyway, we're in Paris. So we just went there momentarily because we were trying to fly back to Australia after COVID. There were no flights in July. The only way we could get back was through India from Paris. It was crazy. There were literally no flights. So we were in Paris and we decided to go sightseeing for the one day we had there or the two. And we pop up from the, what's the metro? I forget what it's called, the Metro. And we pop up sort of trying to go to the Arc de Triomphe.

And they're like, well, stations closed because of the race, was the Tour de France was finishing in Paris that day. Like go figure. That's like, it's so famous and so fun. And the whole city's out. So to get to where we wanted to go, we wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower. So to get there, we had to like walk really far and go all around. It was extremely hard to get there because everything was cordoned off and barricaded. So we ended up hiring a scooter. Do you know what those slime scooters are? And we ended up like, and...

Brett McCallum (07:18.765)
Yeah, yeah.

Hayley (07:21.206)
Of course, we put two people on it because we're too cheap to buy one each. So we just had two people on the one scooter, right? And before you think this is going to be like, you we crash. So we're scootering along and we're finding a way because it's like we had to go much further because we couldn't get on the Metro. It was just a huge disruption. Anyway, so we're skating down. We could see the Eiffel Tower and there's a big wide street next to the river, whatever that's called. And we're kind of on the scooter and we're heading like towards it was empty road. There was no one on the road. We're heading towards the Eiffel Tower.

and we're scootering along and then we sort of see a few cars come past, but we think nothing of it, because we see a few cars and then a few cop cars and a few cars with bikes on the roof, but there's us and there's just, not really anyone around. And then I'm not even kidding, within another 10 seconds or maybe 30 seconds, a bicycle with a gendarme, a policeman, and I do speak some French, he comes past and he says, get off! And I look at him and we kind of jump to the sidewalk and I shit you not.

three seconds later, possibly five, but three, and I've got it on video, the women's whole peloton comes through. We almost got run over by the women's peloton and we almost disrupted the entire race because no one told us we couldn't be on that road. No one except this guy. And by the way, lots of cop cars had gone past us and it was only the guy on the bike who was like just in front of the peloton that actually stopped us. So.

Brett McCallum (08:30.415)
wow.

Hayley (08:48.052)
I almost literally made world TV by stopping the women's peloton. I mean, if they'd hit us, it would have been a shit show of the whole thing. really would have been. I actually think that's a pretty funny story, like pretty recent too. I have it on video, but I'm swearing in it so much, because I was in shock. I was swearing that, you my mother said, don't show anyone.

Brett McCallum (08:59.182)
That's a great store. I like it.

Brett McCallum (09:05.87)
Yeah.

Brett McCallum (09:09.4)
Okay, so what we'll do is we'll get a copy of that and show the world. That's so good.

Hayley (09:10.583)
It was crazy.

Hayley (09:15.178)
I mean, the French, I will say like the French were not very organized. This thing happens once a year in that city. They were not too organized with that. Yeah. So.

Brett McCallum (09:22.604)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think the Olympics was similar, but let's not go there. Okay, let's go back to the very beginning. Where were you born?

Hayley (09:30.55)
Maybe.

Hayley (09:34.807)
Belmont Hospital in Newcastle, New South Wales.

Brett McCallum (09:39.128)
Where, how long did you stay there for? where did you first go to school?

Hayley (09:46.488)
So the day I was born, would you believe my parents were moving house? I don't get it how your parents move house when you're born. I don't even get what parents would plan to be moving house when a baby gets born. But you know, this was the old days. So we actually ended up, it's called Wyoming Gosford, was where they were moving to from Belmont to Wyoming Gosford, which is like in those days, it was a couple of hours drive. So I was brought home to Wyoming Gosford.

Brett McCallum (10:09.208)
Yeah, so it's an hour away. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Hayley (10:15.534)
Yeah, was told. So, Wyoming Public School was where I

Brett McCallum (10:18.274)
And then we say your first school was in...

And then, how long were we there?

Hayley (10:23.468)
Wyoming. Not, not, not Wyoming USA. Yeah, gossip.

Brett McCallum (10:27.606)
No, no, Wyoming and Central Coast New South Wales.

Hayley (10:31.543)
Yes.

Brett McCallum (10:33.218)
And how long were you there?

Hayley (10:36.952)
Probably about five years because I think we moved to, no actually when I was in first grade, yeah so six when I was six, when I was in first grade we moved to Batterbay which was the entrance where I met you.

Brett McCallum (10:46.853)
Which is then, indeed, Barrow Bay, one of the nicest parts of the world. And then you must have went to Barrow Bay Public School. Yeah.

Hayley (10:54.338)
So I went to the primary school.

Hayley (10:58.582)
Yep. Yep. I've still got the mug. Mom has the mug.

Brett McCallum (10:58.934)
and then then the entrance high schools.

Hayley (11:05.004)
The end.

Brett McCallum (11:06.21)
The any. If you had to explain to someone what the entrance, yes indeed, what would you say the entrance high school was like?

Hayley (11:09.302)
Yep, with you, with debating.

Hayley (11:18.55)
Well, the fact is in year eight I almost got bashed up. Was that year seven? By another girl in my year. I think it was, yeah, because we became friends after that. My sister came and stood over her and intimidated her. And she was nice to me after that. We became friends. Yeah, was a surf town, wasn't it? Don't you think? It was a sporty surf town.

Brett McCallum (11:25.934)
Do you a dime?

Brett McCallum (11:38.22)
Well.

Brett McCallum (11:44.397)
Yeah.

Hayley (11:47.608)
There was a lot of really cool kids. You actually, I was jealous of your year. You kind of had the cooler year than I had. Your year was really cool. I had really cool people in it. That's what I thought.

Brett McCallum (11:56.994)
Yeah, it's interesting. I've still got a group of about 20 of us that are still really good mates, which never happens.

Hayley (12:06.166)
Yep. Yep. Robbie Upcroft, Nicole Killen.

Brett McCallum (12:07.618)
which I find amazing. All those guys. it's interesting because my wife was the year below you at school and she sees one or two of the people she went to school with.

Hayley (12:13.964)
all those people.

Brett McCallum (12:26.658)
Whereas I see like 30 of them. So it's really interesting.

Hayley (12:26.71)
Right, yeah. You guys had a unique year. Yeah, you had a unique year. Because I was the year below and I really loved the people in your year. And it's not that didn't like the people in my year, I just really liked the people in your year. I felt like I got on better with them. So yeah.

Brett McCallum (12:32.174)
Hmm.

Brett McCallum (12:44.46)
Yeah, but also I think everyone was very inclusive. So like we included people older, younger, everyone was sort of, became really good mates. And I think that was one of the things I always say the entrance high school was a lower to middle class school in the area, which now is obviously a very more wealthy area now because you got to cost lots of money to live there. But at the same time is like people just got on with stuff. We didn't.

have lots of stuff we just did stuff and got on with stuff and to the beach pretty much.

Hayley (13:19.448)
Yeah, very beachy. And that, we played basketball and sport, tennis, you know, it was definitely the middle-class Australian life. And I will say one thing, it's funny, because my husband says to me sometimes, well, I didn't grow up with a swimming pool in my backyard. And I'm like, well, most people, even in the entrance, grew up with a swimming pool in their backyard. Like, it was pretty common to have a swimming pool in your backyard in Australia as a child. Like, I don't know, I think it was.

Brett McCallum (13:25.955)
Yep.

Brett McCallum (13:43.095)
Yeah.

Hayley (13:46.666)
Like, it's not like, like, he was attributing it to be like someone who was really wealthy, and it's not like that at all in Australia, is it?

Brett McCallum (13:51.116)
Yes. No, not at all. No, obviously wealthy people have pools, but so do some poor people. So there you go. Okay. So now you've left school and what a wonderful experience because you made some lifelong friends, but you left school and did you go to uni or college as you call it over there?

Hayley (14:00.929)
Yeah.

Hayley (14:09.846)
I went to New South Wales, yeah. So I moved to Sydney in year eight, year eight-ish. So then I finished school in Sydney at a public school. Probably the only person in my university course who went to a public school, because then I went to UNSW. Yeah, I did commerce. Yeah, commerce, marketing, and Japanese, of all things. Yeah.

Brett McCallum (14:14.499)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCallum (14:23.82)
And what did you do there? Why?

Brett McCallum (14:31.706)
Why?

Hayley (14:34.104)
Yeah, okay, I'll tell you why. Because I didn't know what else I was gonna do. I had no idea what I wanted to do. So I thought, I will actually share something though. I always wanted to be a journalist. I think if I'd really followed my dreams, I would have been a journalist. I think because I would have been good at it too. I sort of, I was very academic and I got the marks to do anything. And I thought, well, my sister by the way, she went and did medicine. So I was like, well.

Brett McCallum (14:37.954)
Okay.

Hayley (15:03.256)
I don't do medicine because I want to be like her and I didn't see myself being a doctor. She's a doctor now. And so then, you know, it was like, well, do I do law? And actually I actually regret, I wish I'd done law. Law would have been extremely useful as a, you know, just in business and everything. But I didn't do law because I got offered a scholarship to not do law. I got offered the co-op scholarship to like do marketing and you weren't allowed to do a double degree or something dumb. I just did, yeah, marketing because I thought it was creative and it was business. Thought I'd be good at business.

Brett McCallum (15:14.722)
Yeah.

Hayley (15:33.148)
But I didn't do journalism and I could have gone and done communications and I think things would have been different if I'd done that. So I didn't do that because at the time I thought well I got the marks to get into commerce. I should do commerce which is kind of a silly way to think if you think about it. You know?

Brett McCallum (15:47.32)
But also you're only 17, 18 years old and you've to make decisions on what you're going to do for the rest of your life. Like, it's absolutely ludicrous if you look at the pressure that we put on kids to say you have to do this to make your life happen. It's unbelievable.

Hayley (15:54.828)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Hayley (16:06.134)
Yeah, I mean, the only thing I'll say is like, I wanted to have options when I went to, so the only reason I studied so hard was because, studied too hard by the way, was I wanted to have options. I like options. That's just the thing about me in life. I like to have options. I like freedom and choices. That's why I got so many passports. And I kind of felt that going and doing business would just give me lots of options, you know, like it's very general. So it made sense, yeah, to do that.

Brett McCallum (16:17.389)
Yeah.

Brett McCallum (16:32.386)
But it's good you had the opportunity to do that because you tried really hard whereas I did the opposite. I didn't try at all and paid the price. It took me an extra 10, 15 years to get where I needed to be because I just sort of fucked around for most of my time and just enjoyed my life. But it's interesting, my daughter, my youngest daughter, she's just about to finish her law degree. And it's one of those things I wish I always had her done.

Hayley (16:52.662)
Well.

Hayley (16:56.802)
machine.

good on her. Good on her for one. Two, I just, think I put too much pressure on myself. And I think I had a bit of competition at school too. There was a girl who was like, I wanted to beat her. She actually beat me in the end by a little bit. She's a really nice girl too. What was her name? She's really nice. Christine Cunningham, really nice girl. But she beat me. If she hadn't have been in the school year, I wouldn't have put as much effort in.

Brett McCallum (17:15.31)
you

Hayley (17:28.396)
You know, it was funny, it was like healthy rivalry. And I really think I studied too hard though because, well, what do you mean? What about them that were proud?

Brett McCallum (17:32.28)
What about mom and dad?

Brett McCallum (17:38.37)
Were they pressuring you at school or were you more of a, did they not sort of, did they just back whatever you did?

Hayley (17:45.88)
Only at the end of year 10, because it was very evident I was dicking around until the end of year 10. And I was. So we went to Sydney and I was totally like playing up or whatever you call it. Not playing up, but you know. And then year 11 came and I went, okay, I guess I got to hunker down and I wanted to have choices. But I never really planned my life out at all. And I still haven't actually to this day. I wasn't very good in some ways. But anyway, yeah, like got the choice and went to...

Brett McCallum (17:50.893)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley (18:14.24)
I was either going to be Sydney Uni or UNSW. I wasn't going to go to like away. I mean, you don't really do that as much in Australia. So I looked at the courses and what I needed. And in hindsight, like I'll tell you the one thing I am so bad at maths. I'm so shit at maths. mean, I can use a spreadsheet. Okay. But just in general, like mathematical concept, I'm a real visionary brand creation storytelling. Like, like that's me. And that stuff I did in maths, like why? I mean, I had a struggle through three unit maths.

Brett McCallum (18:35.245)
Yeah.

Hayley (18:43.926)
I had to get a tutor and even then I didn't know what I was doing. So even to this day, I have nightmares. Do you have the nightmare? I have the nightmare that I'm going to my three unit maths exam and I didn't do any study. I have that nightmare still. Still. And oops, time to go to study.

Brett McCallum (18:57.269)
No, but I also had a different attitude towards it because well my attitude was that if there were three hour long exams and you're allowed to leave

before the end of the last hour but you couldn't leave in the last hour. So what I realised was that Red Rooster across the road had a special on. I still remember it, Swiss cheeseburgers they were. And so every day I'd finish the exam early and go across and get a burger and wait for everyone else. So that was probably a different attitude than what you had going.

Hayley (19:27.258)
my God. I do remember that chicken salt chips. Yeah, I remember the stadium where we used to do the exams. I remember that stadium. And then it was across the road and they had chicken salt. The Dolphin Theatre, that's right. I do remember that. Yeah, the Dolphin Theatre. These were seen so much bigger when you're younger. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCallum (19:31.95)
Yeah.

Brett McCallum (19:36.086)
Yeah, the Dolphin Theatre, was called.

Brett McCallum (19:45.813)
Sad but truth. Yeah it's funny isn't it? Okay so we're finished uni then what's our next steps after uni? What do we do?

Hayley (19:56.152)
So I quit and I left the country for two and a half years. And was because at uni, I'd gotten these scholarships and I was getting paid to go to uni for this like sandwich course thing they do at UNSW. And when every other kid, so actually kids over here do internships, but I didn't feel like Australians were doing internships every summer. I feel like they were dicking around or maybe they were trying to earn money. But there were definitely not as many of them. But I was forced to do like internships as part of my degree. And I kind of resented it a bit because

I was being paid though, but I was like, it was sort of annoying because my friends would go and dick around and I I felt like I had to work. I didn't study that hard at uni, all I cared about was passing, right? And I got some credits and one, like the odd distinction and, but I did get, do really well in just like the marketing courses. So you had to do like accounting and horrible things like that. And I barely passed, but the ones that were like very creative, I did very well in. So I left uni, I knew I could get jobs at all these companies like, you know, they would come to school and recruit.

but I wanted to go overseas so I went to Japan and taught English and I worked in a ski resort and then I spent the next two and a half years traveling around Europe in a camp, in a combi, camping car, like a combi, and living in the French Alps and ski-bumming. And then traveling through Asia on the way home and India and Nepal. So was like in complete completeness, it was two and a half years of kind of what I called analog nomading. It was like before the nomading was a thing.

Brett McCallum (21:06.542)
Yeah.

Brett McCallum (21:19.405)
Yeah.

Hayley (21:21.644)
But I was analog nomading because you know, was like before, like we had the lonely planet guide, okay? And we had.

Brett McCallum (21:26.798)
100 % and in London we had the A to Z. Do you remember the old A to Z? Which was like a Gregory's back here in Australia. Yeah, that's funny.

Hayley (21:31.34)
The A to Z. We do have the A to Z. Yeah. What were we having in The Gregory's in Sydney. The Gregory's? Yeah, and that was real. Raw and real. That travel, I think. No, no, I had a uni boyfriend that I was with for very long time, like six years. We did the whole trip together, with the exception of Japan. I was there on my own. I was trying to get my Japanese better, because I had Japanese.

Brett McCallum (21:44.886)
And you do it on your own?

Brett McCallum (21:54.158)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley (22:01.398)
I'd done an exchange in Japan and I'd studied at school and I did at university, God knows why. Although I must admit it's a fun party trick to go, yeah, that character means this, but I don't know anything else. like, I mean, I can speak Japanese conversationally and that is a fun party trick as well, will say, just occasionally. Like you'll be somewhere with people and you'll start speaking Japanese if it's a restaurant. People are like, huh? Like, yeah, so went to Japan, taught English, but yeah, no, we got a camp, know, he had grown up in the French Alps.

Brett McCallum (22:12.918)
Yeah.

Brett McCallum (22:21.838)
That's cool.

Hayley (22:30.742)
I'm a big skier, that's the thing. Was really into skiing from a young age when my parents took us in a ski lodge that we were members of. And so from the age of three, I started skiing and you know, I think I get in that flow state when I'm either skiing or riding a bike. And I think that flow state, you know, that people talk about is I'm in a flow state when I'm at that pace. So not driving, not walking, not running, but like riding a bike or skiing, it's about the same speed.

Brett McCallum (22:51.884)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley (22:59.818)
And so I just really liked it skiing, just the crisp air and everything and the thrill of the speed and all that. yeah, so I traveled and we lived in the French Alps and we got jobs where we worked two days a week. It was the perfect balance. We would work like 10 or 11 hours on a Saturday, right? In a ski shop and I would be doing ski rental, like to, and I have to speak French even though I didn't really know French, right? To give all these people ski boots that would come in in busloads.

Brett McCallum (23:24.546)
Yeah.

Hayley (23:28.024)
So 11 hours on a Saturday, like five hours on a Friday, three hours on a Sunday, and that was the week done. 20 hours or 18 in like three days. Yeah, which was kind of cool, because then we could ski like literally Sunday afternoon till Friday afternoon. It was like the opposite.

Brett McCallum (23:33.804)
Wow, that's cool.

Brett McCallum (23:43.595)
Nice.

Hayley (23:46.903)
Yeah.

Brett McCallum (23:48.28)
So that lasted two and a half years.

Hayley (23:49.378)
So that was fun and learning French was Crazy. Yes. Yep.

Brett McCallum (23:54.35)
Two and a half years, that's not a bad trip.

Hayley (23:58.38)
That's a long trip. We came home through Asia, so through Nepal and India. It was a really long trip. the end, it was kind of like I'd injured my knee in France and I really realized eventually I was gonna have to get it fixed because I'd put that off getting that fixed. And it's just the start of many injuries I've had on my knee. I kind of, honestly, it really, really, you know what they say when you're young?

Brett McCallum (24:03.127)
Yep.

Hayley (24:27.094)
You get your muscles, like your whole brain and everything is malleable more. I believe it because you need your elasticity because I came back and I think I was different to when I went in the sense that I was, you know, but different, like, mean, like maybe it affected me in my life forever. As in my inability to just, I don't know, like my inability to be so strategic. Huh?

Brett McCallum (24:31.01)
Yeah.

Brett McCallum (24:40.011)
Of course you were.

Brett McCallum (24:53.24)
Sit still.

Brett McCallum (24:57.186)
Your inability to sit still? Is that one? To sit still.

Hayley (24:58.444)
What'd say?

Hayley (25:04.536)
That's interesting. No, I mean, I just, I felt, yeah, maybe. I just felt like so much had happened. Like, you know when you have a sensory overload? Have you ever had that? Sensory overload from something in experience, right? And I just felt like I'd had so much sensory overload that when I got back to Australia, yeah, you're right. I couldn't settle. It was very hard to settle. It was very hard to like, yeah, sensory overload, like to kind of like calm down and just like, okay, this is what life's about now.

Brett McCallum (25:14.914)
Yeah. Yeah.

Hayley (25:34.732)
You know, it was a bit hard.

Brett McCallum (25:35.192)
So did you come back and go, I better get a job or what'd do there?

Hayley (25:40.982)
Yep. Well, okay, the coolest thing happened. So get this. When I got back, right, and my Japanese was pretty terrible after two years of not being there. And I was looking for a job, right? So there's an in the paper and I'm applying for like these graduate jobs because effectively that's what I was. Anyway, there's this ad in the paper. was like this big, like a little tiny ad. And it said, workers wanted for Nagano Olympics, right? Do you remember the Olympics? I mean, this is showing my age. And I applied and lo and behold, what'd you say? Yeah.

Brett McCallum (26:06.272)
I'm older, remember that.

I'm older, remember that. So it's alright.

Hayley (26:11.436)
So I think there's a delay. So, okay. So lo and behold, right when I get back, I land a job at the Nagano Japan Olympics. don't know if I mentioned, I had been working in that region in that ski resort area. So I kind of knew the area a bit. And somehow, but wait, they were looking for drivers for just like cars to drive people around, just a regular thing, but they had like five VIP jobs.

Brett McCallum (26:21.88)
Ha ha ha ha!

Brett McCallum (26:26.279)
wow.

Hayley (26:38.068)
And somehow I landed one, even though my Japanese wasn't that great at the time. I mean, it was good, but not like what I would think you'd need. VIP, so my job was to take the sponsors and the organizing committee from the Sydney Olympic Games all around the Olympics. And I had to take some TV presenters and things too around as well. The Channel 7 guys, like that Bruce McEvaney guy and people like him. And I had to take them around, like show them around the Olympics because they needed like someone who could take them.

know, speak Japanese and take them around. So I got this cool job. It was like, how did I get that job? yeah, that was, so I got, so I got my first job at an airline at Anson Airlines and I had to tell them, sorry, I can't start when all the other graduates are starting because I've got to go to the Olympics. And I don't know to this day whether they thought I was competing or not. I don't know. Cause I think they thought I was competing and I let them think that. Cause they didn't ask. I just said, I can't do the start day B1. I could do three weeks later. I've got to go to the Olympics.

Brett McCallum (27:11.182)
you

Brett McCallum (27:30.488)
Of course.

Brett McCallum (27:36.91)
That's so good. That is so good.

Hayley (27:38.917)
And I went, it was so fun. I was so lucky. It was so interesting. And honestly, cause I'm a big skier, like I met Alberto Tomba's mind is I didn't meet him, but you know, it was just super cool. Just like fun, you know, doing it. And then I went back and started my job at the airline.

Brett McCallum (27:56.462)
So then you come back from the Olympics and work to the end set.

Hayley (28:01.44)
I worked at, Chancet with Ancet, yeah. I worked at Ancet. I was in the airline management graduate where they groomed the graduates. And it's funny, I really experienced workplace labor relations there because it was unionized and we'd had the pilot strike before that. And just the whole thing that the employees hated management. It was a real thing.

Brett McCallum (28:28.419)
Yeah.

Hayley (28:29.212)
there, I just sensed it. was very interesting, the organisation was sort of an, you know, and then that airline unfortunately got bought by Air New Zealand and got like kind of collapsed underneath Air New Zealand, so it's not around anymore.

Brett McCallum (28:42.71)
No, then so where did you get made redundant from there or how'd you leave there?

Hayley (28:49.654)
Now I went to Virgin because I was kind of headhunted in Virgin was starting an airline. And so the guy who was starting the airline came in from America and he's like, okay, so you know, and he's American, he's like, what's the strategy for who we're going to hire to start this airline on the cheap startup airline? Well, obviously we're going to hire the smartest kids at Ansett, right? So they go and poach all the graduates. They found out the names of all the graduate trainees and they went one by one and poached, started poaching them.

Brett McCallum (28:52.014)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley (29:18.518)
because they figured that, know, ANSAT had already done all the, what do call it, the vetting and screening. And so, yeah, so I got an airline, but I met the airline guy and he said, well, you're gonna have to move to Brisbane or Melbourne. At this point, I still want to get back to Sydney. And so long story short, I didn't get the job at the airline, but they introduced me to the mobile phone company who was also opening and I got the job at the mobile phone company instead. So that's how I got into technology.

Brett McCallum (29:44.225)
in Sydney.

Hayley (29:47.736)
That's how I got back to Sydney and it's how I got into technology. I went and worked for Virgin Mobile's launch, Richard Branson in Australia when that launched in 2000 in a marketing job.

Brett McCallum (29:48.297)
Brett McCallum (29:58.519)
Wow.

Hayley (30:02.316)
Yes, so was like a pivot that I didn't plan. Need to tech.

Brett McCallum (30:05.282)
Yep. And then that started everything.

Hayley (30:10.56)
Yeah, the rest is history in terms of tech, but I will say even today, I was filling out a pitch thing from my startup the other day and it was like, he had to say like where you'd worked and what it influenced you. And I put down Virgin because Virgin is a pretty incredible brand. And still, I think it's, you know, had some, it's endured, you know, probably not as sexy as it was in the eighties and nineties and two thousands maybe, but probably isn't. But even these Virgin cruise ships, like I'm kind of curious. I wouldn't mind checking them out.

Brett McCallum (30:26.038)
Yes.

Hayley (30:39.21)
Like, you know, and by the way, the guy who runs Virgin cruise ships, he's ex, he was my old boss at Virgin mobile. He was an Aussie and he went to Canada. Yeah. So he actually runs that. that Virgin brand. I, you know, it was, very, it was kind of my, one of my memories of like being like fun work in the office because back in those days, like everyone did work in the same office and it was very, you know, collegial and working in Sydney. was very fun. Whereas now, you know, especially in America, people like,

Brett McCallum (30:45.401)
yeah.

Hayley (31:08.834)
They don't socialize, at least here, they don't socialize with their friends. I don't think enough, maybe small business, but corporate America is quite distasteful. It's quite, you know, it's just, people are on guard the whole time, you know, in America. It's just different. Or maybe it's just, maybe the areas are different. Maybe the areas are different. Yep, so how were?

Brett McCallum (31:22.616)
So how did America happen?

Brett McCallum (31:27.146)
It's different here, yeah. It's post-COVID. How did America happen? How did you end up there?

Hayley (31:32.418)
Well, before I went to America, I was four years in Australia or something, and then I went to, actually England first, for seven years. So I went to England because I had the British passport. Most of us just go to England. That's right, because when I was like traveling around, I thought, okay, I'd really love to go and work in Europe, but I really want a real job because I want real money. I want to have money. I think you need money to work in Europe, like if you want to have fun and do things. So I wanted to wait till I established a bit of my career and I could earn a decent salary.

Brett McCallum (31:38.67)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCallum (31:44.205)
Yep.

Brett McCallum (31:52.472)
Yeah.

You do.

Hayley (32:01.688)
So that was like a few years in. So I went to London for seven years, had a bit of an adventure there, and then I came to America after that, and came in like 2012 to America.

Brett McCallum (32:12.984)
So what year were you in London?

Hayley (32:17.272)
2004 until 2011.

Brett McCallum (32:21.816)
So we crossed over because I was there until 05.

Hayley (32:28.242)
by one year. From when? When were you there from?

Brett McCallum (32:29.966)
Yeah, I didn't know that. I was there nine and half years, 97. That's all right. Cheers. I've got water, so cheers. Yeah, we went 97 to... You don't have to have excuses to drink wine. It's fine.

Hayley (32:33.826)
By the way, it's evening here in San Francisco.

You there in 97? Well, it is evening. It's the mission evening. Should I have not said that?

Hayley (32:51.424)
When were you there? 97? You went 97 to 05?

Brett McCallum (32:53.345)
97 to 05 yeah so we went we went for six months after we got married yeah and then we end up having two kids over there

Hayley (33:04.085)
Right. Yeah, you went there for a, you were going for six months and you, yeah, it can do that to you, can't it? Europe can do that to you, can't it?

Brett McCallum (33:09.74)
Yeah, and we stayed for nine and a half years.

Brett McCallum (33:15.198)
It does, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Especially when, like, we had real jobs and we're making good money and we're traveling everywhere five-star and all that sort of fun stuff. We lived the life over there. We didn't do Contiki and that sort of stuff. We did, sort of helicopters into Monte Carlo and stuff like that. It was really cool.

Hayley (33:34.622)
wow. Man, I want to interview you then for like what you A helicopter's in a Monte Carlo.

Brett McCallum (33:36.172)
Yeah, it's a... You know, was heaps of fun back in the day. Yeah, that was really cool. My 25th birthday, actually, we were talking about that the other night. The good old days. But, yeah, things change. You have kids and then life changes. Yeah, my wife, my wife flew us into Nice and then we got in a helicopter and we flew around into Monte Carlo and we stayed in a hotel and then, yeah, it was really cool. That was...

Hayley (33:45.922)
digital days.

Hayley (33:52.203)
So what happened? You took a helicopter to Monte Carlo for your birthday?

Hayley (34:05.608)
I want to do that for my birthday. That sounds amazing.

Brett McCallum (34:07.884)
You should do that. It's heaps of fun. It's a beautiful part of the world. it's lovely. If you go to Monte Carlo, you have to get a picture in the toilets in the casino. Just because they're the best toilets in the world.

Hayley (34:13.528)
I've actually never been to Monaco though. Never been there. That's Monaco, isn't it?

Hayley (34:23.352)
Okay, there's a delay I think. Really? I would love to do that. But anyway, anyway, Wynton, I will put it my list. I will put it on my list. Yeah, so 2012 I hit America. You know like Eddie Murphy coming to America.

Brett McCallum (34:27.565)
Yeah.

You'd have to put that on your list.

Brett McCallum (34:39.308)
And why? Why? Why did you hit America? Why was that after the Europe?

Hayley (34:47.042)
think because I wasn't ready to come home, I was still single, but also more because I'd actually met some Americans in London and there was this visa now that got created for Australians at that time. And I had met a couple of Americans and one in particular influenced me. She said, this is not your place, London, it's not your people. She was an American from New York, she had a domicile, like a place in New York.

San Francisco and London, Notting Hill. And she said to me, London's not your place, go to San Francisco. Because I was very outdoorsy, you I love skiing and outdoorsy stuff. And she said, go to San Francisco, you'll love Lake Tahoe, go there. So I did a reconnaissance tour and I went to South by Southwest one year and I remember because I was on crutches. Because the year before I was on crutches after another knee injury. Yeah. And I went over there and checked it all out and I went, she's right.

Brett McCallum (35:38.124)
That didn't I?

Hayley (35:44.472)
You know, she's right. Like it was just more manageable. And so I came here for six months thinking to the same thing with you. Like I kept my car and I sublet my apartment in London in case I didn't like it. I thought, okay. And then I just never came. I mean, I did go back to get rid of my car and my apartment, but I didn't come back. I'm still here. I don't know. I'm still here. I'm still in San Francisco. mean, people generally move around. It's crazy for someone who has moved a lot.

I've been here a long time, like 12 years. Yeah, so long.

Brett McCallum (36:15.384)
Wow, and San Frans changed a lot in 12 years, hasn't it?

Hayley (36:21.558)
It sure has. I told you I wanted to vote so we could vote the existing mayor out. Yeah, because I can't vote, right? It's frustrating. Yeah, San Francisco is a shit show. Like it is actually unbelievable how filthy the place is and yeah, it's how badly the city's run, I'll be honest, in my opinion. But as a whole, like when I got here, it was really thriving. And I will say only recently, like COVID happened four years ago and only recently would I say that the city started

Brett McCallum (36:28.632)
Yeah.

Hayley (36:51.714)
feeling more crowded and a little bit more buzzy like maybe it sort of was before. But I don't think all of it can be blamed on San Francisco because some of it's COVID and people just wanting to get out of expensive cities and COVID and remote work and all that. So it has changed quite a lot. And the biggest change has been all these self-driving cars everywhere driving around the city.

Brett McCallum (37:13.637)
That's weed.

Brett McCallum (37:17.454)
So my friend who you met the other night, Aaron, he put up on Facebook, I think it was, he was in like an Uber and there was no driver and he's like filming it from the backseat and it was just such a spin because that doesn't happen here yet.

Hayley (37:18.455)
Yes.

Hayley (37:33.848)
Right, I bet it would be a spin. Yeah, I mean, they happen so frequently that I'll be on my bike, I'll be crossing the road. They're everywhere. Literally, I'll be rollerblading in Golden Gate Park and they'll be there. I do rollerblades still with, yeah. And because it's a really good exercise. It's like Centennial Park. I do it with poles, like it's cross country skiing. I'm the only person that does it with poles and it really is like a workout. But yeah, they're everywhere, those cars. And you know, I did that for a living. I did the Uber partnerships like with Waymo. Like that's kind of...

Brett McCallum (37:45.488)
Love it!

Hayley (38:03.692)
That's the thing, it's here and it's really here. Over here in this city. Yeah.

Brett McCallum (38:09.912)
So you landed in San Fran and since then you've done a whole heap of work in the tech space. I remember last time or a while ago when we spoke, you were getting private chats with Intel and you were doing all this fun stuff all around the US. That opportunity is not here in Australia. So you're being given massive opportunity because you actually took the chance and made something of it. Is that something you're proud of yourself about or how do you feel about that?

Hayley (38:26.55)
Yeah.

Hayley (38:40.45)
Well, you know how I feel, I kind of feel that, I told you about that travel when I was younger, that two and a half years, it did change me. I think it made me quite international. I don't know why, because I've been asking myself for a lot, like why don't I want to come back to Australia? And it's not that I don't want to go back to Australia. I actually would like to go back to Australia, but I feel like I've got unfinished business, you know? I felt maybe I had unfinished, yeah, business. And I don't know if you believe in like destiny or purpose or anything, I don't know if I believe in it, but.

Brett McCallum (38:45.314)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Brett McCallum (39:01.326)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley (39:08.928)
Like, I never felt really that I was doing the thing ever, like, even in all the tech stuff I did, I just, I don't think I really found my, like, maybe purpose until recently. And I think I found that because I was here, and the thing I did, not to mention all the other travel I'd done, and I do think that that two and a half years that I did when I was 21 kind of really influenced my future than it might not have been if I hadn't done the two and a half years, or if I'd done just a smaller portion.

Brett McCallum (39:19.63)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley (39:39.393)
Yeah, like I am proud that I kind of went all around the world, but to this day, I didn't really feel like I'd fulfilled my purpose, you know? And I think I'm on the right path now with what I'm doing now. And it's funny, it's only been in the last year that I've felt that way. So that's, you know, funny, isn't it?

Brett McCallum (39:55.788)
The

I'm a true believer is things happen for a reason, at the same time is you got to make those things happen. And a really big part of that is that, and we're to go into it in a second, but what you're talking about, they're doing and putting together and everything actually is your life. That's what you've been doing. Like there's two questions that I've got. want to know whether you've had more knee surgeries or you got more passports because you're the only person I know with so many passports. So do you want to explain how many passports

Hayley (40:04.074)
Right.

Hayley (40:22.882)
Good question.

Brett McCallum (40:26.936)
what you've got and how you got them.

Hayley (40:30.188)
I'm pretty proud of the passport number because I can actually, I've got the ability to get more passports, clean in a night. If this is an Australian audience, you'll understand, right? It's so cool to like open the wallet. But Americans are just blown away. They cannot even fathom that I've got two. Okay, so I have got three and I've got the green card on the way. You know, it takes a while to get that even though I've been here so long. was on that. So Australians have that super easy visa to get the E3.

Brett McCallum (40:31.916)
Hahaha

Brett McCallum (40:58.518)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley (40:59.04)
It's like you wouldn't even bother, like why bother unless you want to be an entrepreneur or stay a long time. I was 10 years on that Australian visa, right? But I couldn't be an entrepreneur with it. So got the green card, the three passports. There's a fourth one I can get. So the first one is Australian, clearly. The second one was British because my father was born in Wales. So just happened he was born in Wales and he came when he was five to Australia, right? The third one was...

Brett McCallum (41:21.272)
Okay.

Brett McCallum (41:25.976)
Yeah.

Hayley (41:27.798)
When Brexit happened, I didn't really need another passport. When Brexit happened, I went and got my Irish passport. And if you've got grandparents in Ireland, I suggest you do it too, or anywhere in Europe. So my grandmother was Irish and that was automatic. But I went and did it like within weeks of Brexit. So I really jumped the queue. Like I got ahead of the thing. Yeah, a lot of paperwork. Not actually that much paperwork really. And then the other passport I haven't... So the green card I got...

Brett McCallum (41:38.254)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley (41:56.3)
you recently, I haven't actually got it yet actually, it hasn't been issued yet, but I got married, that's the fastest path by the way, everyone, I'm sure you know that. But the fourth one I could get is a Greek passport, because not that I need it, but like it would be fun to get. My grandfather was Greek, hence Melodonus. And by the way, it's tempting because the Greek consulate is around the corner from me, where I live in Pacific Heights. So I walked past to go-

Brett McCallum (42:07.982)
Uh-huh.

Brett McCallum (42:14.977)
Okay.

Brett McCallum (42:22.716)
Why wouldn't... Why wouldn't you?

Hayley (42:26.316)
I walk past it a lot, I'm like, I'm gonna pop in and just get one. Don't you think? Pop in and get the green one.

Brett McCallum (42:32.44)
Yeah, it's a idea. Yeah, why not? Why not? And then you're going to become a digital resident of Palu next.

Hayley (42:36.394)
It is! It is!

Hayley (42:41.728)
Right, yeah, well, okay, so what I haven't escaped with all these passports, I haven't worked this out yet, is where did Domicile myself tax-wise so I don't live anywhere? I know that you could do it, right? I know it's a thing. Can't you? I think people do it. Yeah, I could easily do it, easily, obviously. Yeah, and I probably will, maybe I will at some point. Yeah, yeah, because the California tax is really high. So yeah, that's kind of interesting, kind of interesting. I've had seven knee surgeries to answer that question, so. Yeah, seven.

Brett McCallum (42:51.339)
Yes.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

Brett McCallum (43:00.522)
at some point. Yes, definitely.

And what about the knee then? How many? Seven. On one knee or both knees?

Hayley (43:11.264)
Yeah, seven surgeries. Both knees, but I've had two knee reconstructions on one knee, meaning I hadn't done twice.

Brett McCallum (43:22.34)
and you don't quit skiing.

Hayley (43:23.447)
terrible.

Hayley (43:27.09)
No, but you know, I had stem cell injections last year. They worked on one knee and the other, the stem cell. Yeah, yeah, people are doing that now. I don't know. One knee it worked on, the other knee it didn't. So, yeah.

Brett McCallum (43:32.45)
Did that work?

Brett McCallum (43:36.451)
Yeah.

Brett McCallum (43:43.08)
weird isn't it? Bizarre. Okay and then last year or no last year, year before you then did something you never thought you'd do and that is you found the man of your dreams and yet you got married a year ago that's exciting.

Hayley (43:59.82)
That's right. Yeah, so unlike everyone else who married and had kids in their 30s and did all that, I didn't do that. So that's weird, isn't it? Don't you think? I used to think I'm the only person in my school.

Brett McCallum (44:08.554)
No, you've never done anything the same as other people.

Most of them are divorced, so it doesn't matter.

Hayley (44:14.168)
I guess not. You know, wasn't intentional. Well, okay, so here I am, like watching on TV one day and this actress gets on TV, she's a Hollywood actress, and I think she was 48, and she goes, I don't know how old she was, but they made a comment about how she met someone and she got married. She goes, you know, I loved it. This is exactly how she said to the presenter. She said, I just look at it like I just missed my first divorce. I thought that's perfect. That's what I'm gonna say.

And I do, I I miss my first divorce.

Isn't that cool to say? I mean, kind of. Yeah. Yeah, because you can make a mistake and then that sort of puts you back. So, yeah, I met a really sweet guy. We I think we're kind of like Croc Dundee and Linda Kozlowski. What's her? I don't know what her character's called. What's her character in the movie? Because because I'm not even kidding. He is from Colorado and he is a real like like

Brett McCallum (44:47.373)
Fair. That's good. I like it.

Brett McCallum (45:04.791)
Ha ha ha ha!

Hayley (45:16.576)
Not a country guy, I don't mean that, because he grew up near Boulder, but he's kind of like a real outback. You'd call him an outback person in Australia. Like, let me explain. He can hunt with a bow and arrow. And over here, by the way, he's what they call a bow hunter. And over here, that's a big, if I drop that, like, yeah, my husband can hunt with he's a bow hunter, guys go, really, really? my God, wow, wow, wow. Like, it's a thing. But he can, I mean, he willing to hunt, and he fishes. He loves.

Brett McCallum (45:28.099)
Wow.

Yeah.

Brett McCallum (45:41.122)
Her name was Sue Charlton.

Hayley (45:46.1)
Was it? Okay. So I'm kind of like the city slicker and he's like, they're kind of like, you know, not so sophisticated. Like it is funny. He's more laid back than me. So he suits Australia more than me. And in fact, when we went to Australia, I think he would fit in better than I would, like, to be honest. And he's very laid back and he absolutely loves Australia. And when I took him, he could not get over the birds. In fact, we were here one day.

before he really knew me that well. And he was going on about some bird outside. I said, yeah, what is it? yeah. And he never understood why I didn't really care. And then I took him to Sydney. And in our first 24 hours, saw cockatoos. We were in like, Kirribilli we staying. He saw all these cockatoos and he saw all these parrots and roosella everywhere. I'm like, and he's like, now I get it. And then he met Kukaburras. He sort of just couldn't get over the bird life. Cause he's really into bird life. He's really into nature.

really into fishing and fly fishing and motorbikes and just all this stuff that is kind of like, so now I've got him into road biking and he's like, I can't believe I've, I never thought I would wear Lycra. And the other day I took him to like, we were on the bikes, we were going riding and we had our Lycra on, you know, and we walked, we were hungry. So we stopped at the side of the road, like a roadside thing. And it was like a biker, it was like a biker thing, like where bikers go.

And he walked in and he goes, I am going to feel so weird walking in with Lycra hanging out around bikeys because he had a motorbike and all that. Right. And now he's wearing Lycra. I mean, how things change. So that's funny. That's life. Yeah. Yeah. So I met him, which was cool. Very cool.

Brett McCallum (47:29.038)
It's live.

Brett McCallum (47:36.59)
And then you got married.

Hayley (47:40.45)
We got married, we're gonna get married again, because that was kind of like the City Hall wedding. So we are planning to go to Sydney and get married again, at some point. Because it was kind of, by the way, we had to, they say in California, the tech industry go, they'll say we shipped a product. And so I said to her, we shipped a wedding in two weeks. We decided to get married three weeks before we did. Yeah, because the immigration journey, I was trying to work out how I could do the whole bubble startup thing.

Brett McCallum (47:43.448)
Okay.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, nice.

Brett McCallum (47:57.41)
Yes.

Brett McCallum (48:00.812)
Nice. Awesome.

Hayley (48:09.304)
And I explored the options, not wanting Drew to force Drew to marry me, you know? And then we looked at the options and my friend's immigration attorney friend who had done some of my visas, he said, I don't even think about it, just marry Drew. So the rest is history. So that was great. Yeah. Luckily he got his divorce three months before.

Brett McCallum (48:30.384)
that's good then. So he had his first divorce. You missed your first divorce. So we're

Hayley (48:36.632)
He was married for 23 years. Yep. Yep. Like I said, opposite. Three. Three adults. Three above the age of 20.

Brett McCallum (48:39.014)
well.

So as you have kids.

Brett McCallum (48:45.29)
Yeah. And three adults and what what do they think of Haile?

Hayley (48:55.385)
Well, I don't know. The mother, you know. I think they're accepting it. I mean, they're adults and like, but you know, I don't want to comment on, they don't dislike me, but they don't like the fact that their parents are tourists. Yeah, that's how it is, isn't it? Actually, yeah.

Brett McCallum (48:58.941)
Divorces are ugly.

Brett McCallum (49:11.586)
Nah, that's fine. That's good.

Yeah, which is which is only normal. Okay, so we've mentioned the you go

Hayley (49:23.894)
No,

Brett McCallum (49:26.807)
So years and years ago you had a company called Total Heli Ski where you were a tour guide I'm going to call it in helicopters and drop people in to ski in the most ridiculous parts of the world and you used to take CEOs around and you used to do all this amazing stuff heli ski and then from there obviously you had your career and you did everything and you were still doing that on the side and it was your side hustle and all that sort of stuff but

your whole life has been built around travel, around going to things like Burning Man and doing all this weird and wonderful shit a lot of people really wish they could have done then bubble come so you've actually been doing this your whole life and now you're gonna make it into a company tell me about bubble

Hayley (50:13.57)
So I actually truly think like, that's why I say it's probably the most authentic representation of myself, right? Because funny, when I created the Hellesky business, what I remember thinking was the Helly business was all about trying to persuade people to have more fun, right? And like, just trying to almost, I almost felt like that Hellesky company was, the normal person thinks, well, I shouldn't be so, what's the word? What's the word? So indulgent.

Brett McCallum (50:20.472)
You

Hayley (50:43.082)
as to go and spend so much money on a helicopter trip, right? It's a very big deal to spend a lot of money on a week's helisking. It's like $15,000, I think, for some people. And I could see that family people would feel guilty about spending the money. What about the risk and all this? is, the way, the risk is like extremely low versus getting in a car. But it was just a really interesting thing how like I was really in this position where I was like,

Brett McCallum (50:43.352)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley (51:09.58)
people would look at me and see me as aspirational to things I would do. But my whole brand positioning for that business was, know, cause like think about it, wasn't a ski, I wasn't Lindsay Bond. I wasn't a ski racer or anyone famous or anyone good at skiing even particularly, right? My positioning or how I built that brand was, listen, I'm a girl from Australia, right? I love skiing. God, I've got the seven knee injuries to prove it. And if I can do it, you can do it.

So that helisky business was all about encouraging the everyday person that if I can do it, you can do it, right? Just like strive, you know, and people would say, well, I can't afford it. I said, you know what? Don't buy that coffee every day. Make the coffee at home and save the money and put it in a jar and you know, into your time, you might have a heli trip. Like it was a bit sort of, I'm not telling you how to like save money or whatever, but like there's a way, go get a second job, whatever, you know, if you really want to do it. So of course wealthy people go helisking too and then.

there's that whole fear factor and everything. And I saw some really very successful humans go on these helisky trips and get put in their place by the leader, the guide, who would like, kind of, they'd have to take orders from a guide for their safety. And so that sort of dynamic is to play out. So yeah, so I think now that I'm doing Bubble, it's funny because when I think about my career, I didn't become a VP at Intel. Thank God.

I can't imagine how many asses I would have had to kiss to become a VP at Intel. Lick, kiss, whatever. No, seriously, like, God damn, you couldn't pay me enough money not to kiss ass there. So like, kind of feel like, thank God, I have taken an authentic path now, which is, you know, coming up with this idea that I didn't come up with, it was already around and I just happened to be doing it as a side hustle. We can talk about that in a sec.

It kind of came, you know, it sort of like it organically came into my life accidentally. And then, you know, I accidentally started running these houses. And so these share houses in Lake Tahoe, it was really an accident. And I kept doing it. Just it was really quite a love hate thing, actually. It was a bit addictive. And gradually, it took six years, I was doing the running these houses. And then finally, and by the way, frustrated the entire time that I hadn't thought of a startup idea.

Hayley (53:31.138)
quite subconsciously frustrated. Why can't I think of something cool to do as a business that I would love? And then one day I had that penny drop. I was listening to a Sarah Blakely podcast. She's that Spanx founder. You the lady who founded Spanx. was extreme. Yeah, we talked about podcasts earlier and how people, that podcast changed my life, right? Just because it was a snowy night. I was driving to Tahoe.

Brett McCallum (53:43.788)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Brett McCallum (53:52.654)
Wow.

Hayley (53:59.2)
because you know you can work Friday you can do the sneaky Friday afternoon from like sneaky Thursday night I was working Intel and you just drive on a Thursday night and you work Friday morning and then you go skiing in the afternoon and because everyone does Californians don't work on a Friday afternoon so and that was I was listening to it and I had the aha moment something she said just snapped and I realized that maybe the idea had been under my nose for six years that I'd been running these houses and could it be an idea

that I should explore. And so that's kind of why I started exploring it. This idea that like people get a lot out of this immersive co-living experience. They really find it very fun and much more, you can kind of make really strong connections from doing that. And so, like some of the best friends I've got in America, I met through these ski houses. So that's kind of like, you know, a story, my personal story.

Brett McCallum (54:39.107)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley (54:57.65)
including my husband. I met him in a share house. In a bubble.

Brett McCallum (54:58.306)
So it's interesting.

wow.

Brett McCallum (55:04.664)
So it's interesting you've been doing this for so long, it makes it lot easier to actually do. And so when you know something that well, it's actually really easy to roll that into a business. When you enjoy stuff, that's what I always find. I've done a lot of different businesses over the years and the ones I enjoy the most, I do the best at. Because you enjoy it and you should enjoy life.

Hayley (55:25.91)
hope so, because, yeah.

Brett McCallum (55:30.047)
My only concern, I have one concern for you. I have one concern for you. That is that you'll be bored out way before you even get chance to do it. No, you're gonna get bored out.

Hayley (55:30.1)
Yeah, I mean, I've worked so hard since I started this interview.

Hayley (55:37.942)
My knees?

Hayley (55:42.23)
No, mean, no.

Brett McCallum (55:44.286)
Guaranteed I you what you watch this space 100 % Someone will come and buy you early on

Hayley (55:49.144)
Okay. Well, I'll tell you what's interesting. I'll tell you about Silicon Valley, right? At least now. Like in the old days, think you could just, well, if you had lots of exits, you could just have an idea in a napkin and you know, someone will fund you, right? And in now, know, 2020, know, you've heard about the fundraising problems and you know, everything's like so tight now. And with interest rates high and people could put their money in other places. And you know, so

Brett McCallum (55:56.685)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley (56:18.54)
Then it was like, so by the way, I didn't even go anywhere to try and get money. I just knew that it would be hard to get money now because no one gets money without something. And so it took me eight months to build or nine months to build the product. And to your point, yes, I felt like, I actually felt like building the product was almost too easy. I'm a little bit concerned like, is the product, cause I, no, no, no, cause like it's, should the product be different? It's not proven yet. Cause we don't know, I've only been in business a month.

Brett McCallum (56:31.587)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCallum (56:39.553)
You

Hayley (56:48.28)
But is the product, how right or wrong is it? Because I built it so naturally. I did build it with two other people. One was a UX designer and one was not a UX designer, but like a product guy. So it's kind of like the three of us. I had the deep experience. And I mean, there were many times where we're designing the product and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I has to go like this because of this reason. Like I just knew it. So to your point. But yeah, it's pretty exciting and the creation and the brand. I'm really enjoying the branding stuff.

because I do want to build like this global community of people that are kind of collectively want to have a good time and want to have a socially responsible time. And you know, I kind of build on principles from things like Burning Man and experiences I'd had with running the lease, like those sorts of values. I kind of created this value system for Bubble, right? Because it's like stay together, share together. That's the tagline. And the value system was the first value is serendipity.

serendipity of like, who might you meet in the bubble? And I met Drew in the bubble. I met my CTO in a bubble. There's all these people I know in my life I've met in a bubble. Which is a group stay, like a group trip. That's what it means. It's kinda cool.

Brett McCallum (57:47.116)
I love it.

Brett McCallum (57:53.24)
Yeah.

Brett McCallum (58:02.082)
Where did the brand come from? Where did the name come from?

Hayley (58:06.296)
So that night that I had the aha moment, I got to the house. I Drew was at the house. I met Drew at this point. And I went to bed and I woke up in the morning and Drew absolutely remembers this. I woke up and I said, Drew, I've got the brand name. Cause I told him when I got to the house, I was so excited. It was about 11 o'clock at night when I got to the house and I told him all about the idea. And he goes, what are you going to call it? And I said, I don't know. And then the next morning I wake up and the first thing I said was, it's going to be called bubble.

Brett McCallum (58:10.178)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley (58:36.022)
Isn't that funny? I had dreamt it. Do you think that's weird? And the reason I called it bubble was that after COVID, a bit of a piss take, everyone in the world kind of knows what a bubble is, right? Remember the terminology bubble was global. So plus bubbles are fun, right? Bubbles of any type, champagne, foam, bubbles are just so fun. What you think?

Brett McCallum (58:37.198)
That's so cool. That's so cool. No, it's awesome.

Brett McCallum (58:49.154)
Yeah.

Brett McCallum (58:53.869)
Yes.

Hayley (59:05.804)
So double equals one.

Brett McCallum (59:05.814)
I love it, yes. So you're still raising? Where are you up to in the journey?

Hayley (59:14.594)
So I've actually found a lead investor, which is pretty cool. But so I started with, so back to the eight months thing. So there was a period of time in like May, June, where I, you know, every, I'm sure every product person has, it's like, never built a product before. We were behind schedule, my schedule by about, we're getting behind by like two months. I thought it was going to be out by May or June and July, it turned up like October one, but.

Brett McCallum (59:17.057)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley (59:41.334)
But to the level that I really felt, because we did some, I don't want tell you about the funding in a sec, we did some proof of concepts with different events. And what I realized is when you're launching a consumer product and you're people to pay through you, you have to have a product that looks good, that looks credible. You can't just slop something together. we didn't have a, we slopped something together so we could kind of prove out, you know, the MVP, right? And that's difficult because really you do need something that looks credible, right? That looks reputable.

That's why I spent the extra time doing that bit. So then it was summer too and like, you know, all the VCs and everyone goes on holiday. Like, unbeknownst to me, everyone takes a holiday. I didn't. I was working six days a week, 15 hours a day, sometimes seven days a week, but enjoying every moment of it. And so now I'm fundraising because I've sort of like launched the product. I've got a really big customer launching, like unexpectedly big customer launching in a couple of weeks, a bubble, like lots of bubbles for hundreds of people at Art Basel.

and working on partnerships with like ski resorts and so kind of like it's there's this interest and I'm picking off the pockets where it's like obvious where people need help with housing like like employee housing at ski resorts for example and to start with while we kind of start building the brand so I've got sort of a lead you know kind of investor interested a couple of angels there's an Airbnb employee who I hope she invests because she was extremely early and a real believer.

And that really means a lot to me because Airbnb are such an important, the people who provide the accommodation are a really important part to the puzzle of like making public bubble a success longterm. Yeah, so that's interesting. So yeah, I'm raising, I'm talking to some strategic angels here and this VC and probably some other VCs and starting that, I mean, not starting, but yeah, kind of starting that process again.

Brett McCallum (01:01:21.261)
Yes.

Brett McCallum (01:01:38.798)
That's exciting.

Hayley (01:01:40.76)
So I hope it doesn't take long because I'll tell you why. Everyone says it will take long, but like it's exhausting when you're trying to run a company at the same time. But I'm not complaining because everyone has to do it. So I'm not complaining, you know.

Brett McCallum (01:01:47.886)
Hahaha.

Brett McCallum (01:01:53.944)
Yeah, that's good. That's very, good. So where can people find bubble?

Hayley (01:02:01.976)
bubble.co, so it's bubbl.co. And on social media, it's easy to find us because we are let's bubble on all the social medias, Instagram, Facebook, know, X is it called that and Twitter, is that on TikTok, where, YouTube. So I don't think we've done much on TikTok yet, but it's let's bubble. And it's funny because let's bubble is kind of like, I hope that becomes like a thing, let's bubble.

Brett McCallum (01:02:06.829)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCallum (01:02:19.384)
Yeah.

Hayley (01:02:31.734)
You know, the idea is like, let's get out. You know what I mean? Like I got t-shirts made and they say, adventure awaits dot dot dot let's bubble.

Brett McCallum (01:02:42.41)
it love it love it

Hayley (01:02:43.884)
And you can bubble for anything, Brett. Like a holiday, a concert, a festival, a chess tournament, a running competition, a Burning Man, a conference. You can bubble for anything.

Brett McCallum (01:02:59.886)
Okay so you've got 30 seconds now. What's your 30 second... We're in a lift. What's your 30 second pitch to me for some money?

Hayley (01:03:10.688)
Say that again, if what? 30 pitch for what? 30 second pitch for what?

Brett McCallum (01:03:12.45)
You're in a lift, we're in a lift, we're on our way up in a building, you got 30 second pitch for bubble.

Hayley (01:03:19.968)
Right. Okay. Okay. So have you ever been on a shared trip before? Have you ever solo traveled and never had anyone to go away with? Maybe not, she got married so young. Have you ever wanted to go and travel with other couples? So if the answer is yes to any of those things. So what, I'm not very good these. Have you ever tried to organize a group trip? Because what I found every time I asked someone was that it's kind of a bit of like herding cats.

And so what I've done is created a platform that does two things. It's one, very useful to organize trips very effectively and efficiently. 66 % of time you save doing that. I know, because I did it with 200 people. And then two, it helps you find other people to travel with. travel is, know, life is better shared, in my opinion. And so, you know, it helps build a whole new category and option for people to find others to travel with. So that's Bubble. That was not a very good.

Brett McCallum (01:04:14.954)
love it well done it was good that was all right it was good it was good now it's

Hayley (01:04:16.568)
30 seconds. Yeah. Well, I was trying to remember what we have on the website because the website has got a really cool, I was like, I couldn't remember.

Brett McCallum (01:04:28.302)
It's funny because obviously as you know I've been married a very long time and we've always just traveled together or with our kids and for my wife's 50th birthday this year we ended up getting a massive share house down at Chinnscliff and we had a whole pile of people come and they all stayed there and we could have bubbled.

Hayley (01:04:48.876)
You did bubble, but you bubbled with your own thing. You did bubble. The way I look at bubble, there was pre-bubble and post-bubble. There was the world before bubble, and you did bubble. You just didn't know you were bubbling. Honestly, I truly mean that because a bubble, can you imagine the investors going, how is this different to Airbnb? I get that. I say, well, Airbnb is a really great way to book a nice place to stay.

Brett McCallum (01:04:51.318)
I did bubble. I freelance bubbled.

Brett McCallum (01:05:05.282)
There you go.

Brett McCallum (01:05:12.717)
Yeah.

Hayley (01:05:18.52)
But a bubble is a really great way to book a nice, a great experience. So a bubble is the group first, the experience and the stay all in one bubble. So it's the three things together, you know, that makes, you know, the thing. So yeah, you did bubble and yeah, next time you could use bubble and I guarantee you whoever had to organize it, which might've been you, would have saved a lot of time and it would have been you. There you go. So yeah, and you can, and that's how you can, you can,

Brett McCallum (01:05:39.896)
That was me.

Brett McCallum (01:05:44.78)
Yeah, we drank lots of bubbles.

Hayley (01:05:48.608)
Yes, as you should, that's very important. You drink a lot of official bubbles, no doubt, right? Did you? There's bubbles in beer. There's a lot of bubbles in beer. Yeah. I love bubbles too. Bubble bath. Think about it. Bubble in the ocean, like foamy waves. There are so many bubbles in the world. Yeah. Bubble gum. Think about bubbles. Bubble gum, yeah.

Brett McCallum (01:05:50.47)
You

Brett McCallum (01:05:54.826)
Indeed, indeed, yes. There are lot of bubbles.

Brett McCallum (01:06:04.664)
Ha ha ha ha ha!

Brett McCallum (01:06:10.466)
That's so good, that's so good. Okay, I got some questions for you now.

Okay, what's your greatest achievement in life?

Hayley (01:06:18.002)
wow, okay.

I didn't have kids or anything like that.

I think just the freedom, being able to like, I guess, achieve freedom, that's been pretty cool. I've been very lucky.

Brett McCallum (01:06:28.238)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCallum (01:06:32.258)
That's awesome. Love that. Who's the person who had the biggest influence on your career?

Hayley (01:06:36.204)
With that comes, you know, other things.

Hayley (01:06:48.692)
my God. One person, shit. I don't know. That's as in like what I'm doing now or ever. I don't think anyone. I think this is the problem, Brett. I didn't listen to anyone. I don't think, okay, I'm gonna share this with the audience, the younger people. Get mentors, because I didn't get any. I didn't really have any. I did not really get a good mentor, which meant I didn't really plan my career. I'd be VP at Intel if I did. God, I'm so glad I'm not a VP at Intel though, come on.

Brett McCallum (01:06:56.931)
Anything.

Brett McCallum (01:07:06.413)
Yeah.

Hayley (01:07:17.272)
Maybe the best person was the person that said, leave Uber and go and do your own thing. And a lot of people said that to me, not one person. So it's kind of hard for me to say who it was, sadly.

Brett McCallum (01:07:28.684)
No, that's fine. Who had the biggest influence on you personally?

Hayley (01:07:33.142)
Maybe my dad, my dad, my dad maybe. My dad maybe. Yeah, maybe my parents, like my dad sort of said, you know how some people like all the stuff I did with the helisking and all that and I'd be like, hey dad, I'm going helisking in Alaska next week. And he'd be like, that's good love. You know, have a good time. he never, they never, my parents never freaked out about anything I did. You know, I'm like, I used to think, cause other people would tell me that their parents would freak out, right? As stuff they would do.

Brett McCallum (01:07:49.422)
you

Hayley (01:08:00.632)
and I don't think I ever did anything really dangerous. I think he always thought, you know, well, she's going with a helisky operation and la la la and the best guys in the world and la la la la. But there should have been something in their heads that would have thought, something could happen to her. But they never really expressed it or told me that. And I, as a result, I never felt constrained. So back to that freedom question, you know, if there was never something I ever wanted to do, I usually just did it. So I think that's probably my parents and in particular my dad's parents. Yeah.

Brett McCallum (01:08:19.203)
Yeah.

Brett McCallum (01:08:26.178)
Great, great place to be in.

Brett McCallum (01:08:33.014)
Okay, you ready for quick fire across the lag?

Hayley (01:08:38.316)
What's that mean? Is that a strain? don't understand. yeah, the lag. Yep. Yep.

Brett McCallum (01:08:39.874)
Well, it's lagging, but it's a quick fire questions.

Do get it? You're with me?

Okay, ready? Favorite food.

Hayley (01:08:53.624)
it's Thai food. Thai food, any Thai food.

Brett McCallum (01:08:56.408)
Favorite song.

Hayley (01:09:04.82)
God, Beatles song maybe? I don't know. actually I really like ABBA.

I would do song, would do artist, ABBA. ABBA's cool.

Brett McCallum (01:09:15.04)
Okay, favorite place in the world.

Hayley (01:09:21.366)
The mountains, somewhere high, like Switzerland or Alaska, where there's really great skiing, out of skiing, in the wilderness. Yeah, heli-skiing. Canada, anywhere in the mountains.

Brett McCallum (01:09:36.812)
What's next for Hailey Honeygiver?

Hayley (01:09:42.516)
Build bubble. Build bubble. Change the world to become a more inclusive, connected world. I mean, that's our mission, right? One bubble at a time. So, you know, they say when you're climbing a mountain, which I consider myself at the bottom of Mount Everest right now, because you build the product, that's the hike up from Calipitar, up from Lukla, the base camp, and then they start the climb, right? So I'm starting the climb now at the product's launch and...

You know, they say that when you're trying to climb one step, just look at that next step. And I think that's kind of like what I'm trying to do right now. Like what's the next step and then the next step. Although I'm thinking out here about what the world will be like when bubbles in the world. Like when I was living in London, I could be like, shit, it's Easter in two weeks. I've got nothing to do. I don't know what I'm doing. What are my friends doing? I'll go check on bubbles, see what's on there, and if I can find a bubble to do. That's my vision, right? But I'm just sort of like one step at a time.

Yeah, we're gonna build bubble one bubble at a time.

Brett McCallum (01:10:42.262)
Absolutely love it. Well, Hailey, it's been an hour and 10 and it's been a great hour and 10 minutes. I really love talking to you and as you know, we love you lots and thank you so much. As far as I'm concerned, you're an awesome human. Thank you.

Hayley (01:10:42.7)
and more fun world.

Hayley (01:10:58.418)
Brett, as far as I'm concerned, let me say back, you are an awesome human and I want to listen to your awesome human interview. I really do. Thank you so, so much. And it was amazing to talk to you again and like catch up and we didn't get to talk about the blazers, but yeah. I've still got my badge. I've still got my debating badge. The badge? We had a badge too. I was so proud of that badge.

Brett McCallum (01:11:02.715)
Thanks, darling.

Brett McCallum (01:11:16.011)
The blazers let's go there. Your badge okay we did we did the bait team but the best thing about that and we're still recording this is even this is even funnier because we're still recording so what it was was that we had to there was only four blazers in the whole school and they were green and they had a red dolphin on them and no matter who you were or what grade you were in

Hayley (01:11:28.888)
It's a danger,

Brett McCallum (01:11:44.716)
you got to wear the blazers because you were representing the school. big guys in year 12 had them and we had them and they were like three sizes too big. And we had our debate team badges. We look so good. I've actually got a photo somewhere. I'll try and find it.

Hayley (01:11:58.134)
We did. Yeah, try and find it. Thanks again, Brett. That was so fun. Yeah, somehow it was somewhere in my parents' house and my thing is my little badge with my little just high school debating team thing on it. Very proud of that day. Drew says, I would be a great debater now because of how I will argue. Thank you again, Brett. It was so nice to see you and I don't if you're already Australian, but.

Brett McCallum (01:12:01.986)
Ha ha ha ha!

Brett McCallum (01:12:11.642)
that's so good.

Brett McCallum (01:12:17.07)
Thanks, Hales.