The high-vis mental health shift with Ed Ross
Content warning: we touch on some sensitive topics in this episode that could be triggering for some listeners.
What if the simplest way to change a culture is to wear the change on your sleeve? In this episode of The CMO Show, Ed Ross shares how TradeMutt is transforming mental health conversations in the trades through strong branding and purpose-led storytelling. From high-vis shirts that spark dialogue to a free counselling service for tradies, it’s a masterclass in grassroots impact and authentic marketing.
Workwear with purpose
TradeMutt is a movement wrapped in a clothing brand. With 50% of profits funding TIACS, the brand is redefining what it means to wear your values. “We’re not mental health professionals,” said Ed. “We’re just trying to change the culture around help-seeking behaviour.” From pub-tested prototypes to national media coverage, TradeMutt’s growth has been powered by word-of-mouth, strong design, and a deep understanding of its audience. “The shirts market themselves...they’re visible, they’re loud, and they start conversations,” said Ed.
Designing for impact
TIACS offers free, ongoing counselling with the same practitioner, no waitlists, no barriers. It’s a model built for tradies, by tradies. With more than 1,100 clients last year and growing demand, TIACS is proving that community-led solutions can scale. “On average four sessions per client, 75% of calls are male...50% of our calls coming to us through either family and friends, TradeMutt, or workplaces. Our vision for TIACS is to be the mental health counselling service you tell your mates about, and that’s happening,” said Ed.
Speaking their language
One of TradeMutt’s most powerful insights is the importance of cultural fluency. Ed explains how traditional mental health messaging often misses the mark with tradies, who value directness, humour, and authenticity. From the tone of their social media to the way TIACS counsellors interact with clients, TradeMutt’s success lies in meeting people where they are, not where the system expects them to be. For marketers, it’s a reminder that relevance isn’t just about content, it’s about context, tone and trust.
Lessons for marketers
TradeMutt’s story is a reminder that authenticity isn’t a buzzword, it’s a business strategy. By staying true to their roots and focusing on what they do best, Ed and co-founder Dan Allen have built a brand that’s impossible to ignore.
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This episode of The CMO Show was brought to you by host Mark Jones, producers Kate Zadel and Kirsten Bables and audio engineers Ed Cheng and Daniel Marr. This is an edited excerpt of the podcast transcript.
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Mark Jones
We hear a lot about being authentic and real as a brand, and it's easy to say it, but a lot harder to do it. The question is, when push comes to shove, what will you do? How will you respond when the going gets tough?
Hello and welcome to The CMO Show. Thanks for joining us. I'm Mark Jones. The CMO Show is a podcast produced by ImpactInstitute in partnership with our friends at Adobe. Now, today we have something a little bit different and certainly very colourful. TradeMutt is a workwear brand. It's for tradies, for, you know, carpenters and plumbers, electricians, all these amazing people who keep our world working. And it is a workwear brand that combines all the high colour, sort of fluoro style clothing that you might expect to see on a trade site with a little twist. Really interesting design, and it's really focused on making a difference in men's mental health, raising awareness of suicide and also has a not-for-profit arm that provides free counselling.
It's an amazing story about a couple of tradies that decided to do something. Really, really interesting insight into how they went about building the business. Of course, how they market their product in the way they think about, you know, how they engage with a really unique target audience that we don't talk a lot about on The CMO Show. So my guest is Ed Ross. He's co-founder and a director at TradeMutt. Let's see what he's got to say.
Ed, thank you so much for joining me. I want to dive straight into it. First of all, I've done a bit of research. You are rocking the, what you're looking at, Territory sleeve work shirt. Do you want to tell me a bit about the shirt? Tell me a bit about TradeMutt for people who don't know what's going on right now.
Ed Ross
Yeah, absolutely, Mark. This is actually July's release, to be honest, but it's okay. You're very close. What you're looking at is the most recent one and they do look a little bit similar. Yeah, it's the TradeMutt shirt I've got on today. It's one of our TradeMutt products. The Territory sleeves is normally my Monday shirt because I don't have to go into the office so I can be a bit more relaxed at home. Yeah, TradeMutt work shirts, they're conversation starters, funky work shirts. We make high viz as well to help start conversations around mental health and wellbeing on job sites around the country and help make the invisible impossible to ignore.
Mark Jones
Where's home for you.
Ed Ross
Mate, I live up in Toowoomba. Our office for TradeMutt's in Darra and TIACS, the non-profit, is based in Toowong, so sort of South East Queensland.
Mark Jones
Yeah, I saw the hat there. That stands for This is a Conversation Starter for those playing at home, correct?
Ed Ross
Yeah. Well, it was the acronym to start with, but we're just running TIACS now as a marketing person. The start of it was to bridge the gap between the bar logo on the back of the TradeMutt shirts and then the non-profit. But TIACS as an entity doesn't really start conversations, the people reaching out to it does. We're just sticking with TIACS now, but it was definitely the genesis of the start of it.
Mark Jones
Yeah. What does that service do? What service do you provide?
Ed Ross
Yeah, TIACS is an early intervention, counselling service Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM via telehealth, text, and call. It's designed specifically for Australia's blue-collar community and their loved ones. Point of difference is that you speak to the same counsellor every time you reach out, so it's as if you're going and seeing a psych or a counsellor in person. You go back and normally have a session with them more than once and they understand your story and why you're there and what your presenting needs are. That's exactly the same with TIACS. You just speak to that same counsellor every time and you get up to eight sessions every year. On average people, are using it four times at the moment, which is great. Continued use of service, which is awesome, and a big point of difference as well is that there's no more than a two-week waiting period for your first full session and you speak to the counsellor on the day you do reach out. Yeah, really important stuff.
Mark Jones
That's amazing. Now, I reached out to you guys because I've been actually tracking you for a little while now. Your co-founder, Daniel Allen, is a brother of an old mate Tom of mine who I used to work with in media way back in the day.
Ed Ross
Oh, there you go.
Mark Jones
Yeah. I've been aware of you and, in particular, I've seen a real increase in reach in social over the last few years, I think it's fair to say.
Ed Ross
Yeah.
Mark Jones
But before we get into the marketing or how the whole thing's working, I'd love to understand a little bit about the background between yourself and Dan. Tell me about that backstory. I think that's really the key to this whole story.
Ed Ross
Yeah. We both come from very different backgrounds. I'm from Central Queensland, grew up on sheep and cattle stations out near Longreach. Dan's from inner western suburbs of Sydney and we met on a building site at the end of 2014. He was a licenced tradie. He'd moved up to Brisbane on Mother's Day a few years before 2014. He just wanted to start working for a new builder and wanted a little bit more of a fresh start.
He moved up just with an overnight bag basically and never went home and he started working for the same builder I did on the same day in 2014. Well, the start of my journey, mature age carpentry apprenticeship. As the two new blokes on site, we got lumped together to do all the shit jobs. Having myself having a hunger for knowledge and him having the wealth of it was a really good partnership to start off with.
We did lots of work together working for a builder and conversing about different business ideas and what we'd do one day, because actually starting a building business didn't look all that appealing because everyone that we knew that were running building businesses were stressed and their marriages or relationships weren't in great places. We didn't really aspire to really replicate any of that.
An idea that we did have was work wear. No one really done anything with work wear before and we felt there was a really big opportunity to do something there and that was just an idea. And then at the end of 2015, Dan lost a mate to suicide very unexpectedly. Dan got a phone call when we were working together on a Thursday afternoon and was informed that his mate was starting a mature age carpentry apprenticeship on the Monday, and Sunday morning he was no longer with us. That was a moment in time that affected Dan and I differently. I never met Dan's mate. I didn't know him. Dan had obviously lost a very close mate completely out of the blue and not to the narrative in which he was told.
Yeah, with him just expecting him to be starting this new job on the Monday and him no longer being there, it was quite a shock. Then we just were going through the motions after that basically of me trying to support Dan while he was rolling into work and Dan trying to go through that grieving process and then figure it out. We just quickly realised that there was a massive issue around this mental health piece and talking to marketing. We felt that it was being marketed really, really poorly.
We felt that it was being marketed in a way that, when we first started, there was this expectation or ideology that if you said the wrong thing, fuck, someone's just going to hurt themselves. You're better off saying nothing. You know what I mean? Just don't say anything. It might trigger someone. And we're like, "That's just insane. That's not reality." We saw the way that mental health as a topic had been really branded with these words that we never use, but I'll use it now to explain it. The word stigma, we're like, "Well, that's in and of itself a massive problem. Just stop using that word."
The bus shelters that Dan often talks about, you see a photo of a room and a bloke sitting on the floor in a dark lit room and his head in his hands. It's kind of like personifying depression and we're like, "That's not what any of this shit looks like. If it was what it looked like, why would anyone want to associate with it?" We felt there was an opportunity to really put a new spin on this whole thing and it rolled back into the work wear as an idea. We learned about social enterprise and profit for purpose and we thought, "Holy shit, we might be able to actually do something where we start our own business and actually create some social change and change the narrative here." That was it. That was the birth of TradeMutt.
Mark Jones
I mean, that's an amazing story and I did see that Dan has got a TED talk from Brisbane where he shared a bit of that story. I mentioned that in case the listener wants to look up Daniel Allen TEDxBrisbane to hear that full story. I think what's amazing to think about this in a few chunks, firstly you've got that trigger moment, which of course is tragedy, and then looking for some sort of redemption like, "We've got to do something." I really love that.
You've just spoken about a huge disconnect, because this is obviously a marketing show, where we think about marketers often take great pride in understanding their customers and understanding their audiences and having messages and words that really connect. It is quite stunning to reflect on just how much of a disconnect there was at that time from other parties, whether it was well-meaning government departments or who knows what. And then to actually doing something about it, I think just at the very simple level, to have gone from "we should do something" to actually make it happen, least of all that we are now here. What is it, 10 years you've been going since...
Ed Ross
TradeMutt turns eight in March.
Mark Jones
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Starting it and keeping it going. There's like so many tick boxes here. You are from the trades, too, as you were saying. Another quick connection point, too. My eldest son is second year apprentice chippy.
Ed Ross
Oh, awesome.
Mark Jones
Yeah, and I've met all of his mates. They built the side of a house. They've got a very clear and direct way of talking. One of the things I like about the culture, if you like, or the community of people in the trades is that they don't muck around in terms of the clarity of speaking and what they mean or what they don't mean, unless of course they're having fun and winding someone up or stealing the apprentice's wheels off his car or whatever the prank is of the day. That whole thing, the comedy side is quite high too. What's your thoughts now that you're this far into it in terms of why is it so hard for people in the mental health professions and, even more broadly, in corporate to understand the language and the psyche of people in the trades? Why do you think there's been that disconnect in the past and, I think, still to this day really not quite getting it? What's your take on that?
Ed Ross
I think personally it's very much an us and them thing. There's too much of a gap, because I think... For me personally, I think I can put into two brackets. It's like men and then also trade-based men is it's... It's definitely not feeling like you're the victim. That's definitely not it, but it feels like you're kind of out on your own a little bit and it's hard and difficult and people can't understand really what your work life and life is like unless you've lived it. When these white collar professionals are saying, "Hey, tradies, you need to start doing this shit or you're not going to be..." They're like, "Get fucked. We don't care." You know what I mean?
Mark Jones
Right.
Ed Ross
They just will not listen. We even find that, from our perspective, we've got to go in and be ourselves to them, drop some F bombs, be on the level, speak the language. Otherwise, they can pretty quickly feel as though we're not on the same level. That's an important thing, even on the TIACS side. Our counsellors, they're encouraged to be a bit looser over the phone to have that personal feel to be like, "oh, I can swear or I can be that flexible person to ensure that this person feels safe to talk to me."
I think, for us, we've had the cut through and, lack of a better term, success in breaking through to the trade community, because we're not trying to be anyone that we're not. I'm not a mental health professional. I don't pretend to be a mental health professional. All we're trying to do is just change the culture around help-seeking behaviour and provide the actual mental health service through TIACS if and when they need it. That's it. We're not here virtue signalling being like, "Hey, you've got to drink your green tea and run 10K before you go to work every day." It's like, "No, you just got to make sure that you're not going to hurt yourself. And if you do want to improve yourself and wellbeing, we've got a way for you to start that, but also just be there for yourself and your mates."
Mark Jones
It's interesting with the connection through to the shirts from that idea, because they're very bold. There's these really interesting designs. Work wear shirts look bright enough already, so to do something in that space is really, really interesting. Tell me about how that was such a breakthrough idea. What was the moment where you were like, "You know what? Why don't we just take this thing that we all see all the time and do something really bold?" Because to me that says, "Well, we get it." But there's still got to be a sense of experimentation. How did it all come about?
Ed Ross
Yeah. I suppose it was really just a journey of steps where we wanted to do the work shirts. It took us for ages to get something that worked, that actually we thought we may be able to sell. And then when we finally got our samples and wore them down to a pub on a Thursday afternoon and people just coming up to us and asking about it. It Didn't even have This is a Conversation Starter on them at that time, but people were just coming up to us. We're like, "Holy shit. This is actually working."
We're telling them the idea of what we're doing and everyone loved it. It just rolled on from there. And then once we got... 7NEWS reached out to us in Brisbane and said they wanted to put us on the telly and then we launched with that. Pre-ordered 1500 work shirts and away we went. It was just crazy, the momentum, but it's funny. The story of this brand is obviously what sells the products and sells everything that we do, but it's not a business that we can just go into a boardroom and be like, "Right. Oh, BHP, you need to roll these shirts out with every single employee you've got." You just cannot do that. But what you can do is give a free shirt to someone that works at BHP, then wear it to a job site on the Monday, and everyone ask them what it is and wear to this day.
I was saying this down in Melbourne last week for an All Energy conference and I was like, "To this day, I've never pitched this idea to someone about what we do and then say it's a shit idea after they've come up and asked us what the shirt's about." It's like, "This is what we do." It's like, "Oh, that's either amazing or incredible. That's so interesting, so different," or whatever it is, but it's never, "That's a shit idea."
Mark Jones
Yeah.
Ed Ross
Again, we've just stumbled onto all of this. It's just the beauty of the way these products market themselves is that more shirts or more products sell more shirts and more products and build the community more and more because they're out there, they're visible. and people are telling that story over and over again. That flywheel spin in the right direction, which is really cool, and it takes the pressure off us trying to have to do anything that's not genuine, really, because if we had to go out and knock on doors and try and sell this thing, then it just would never work.
Mark Jones
I mean, it's an amazing story of really classic word of mouth marketing, where the word of mouth just takes off through the media and all these other channels that you mentioned. What does you'll never walk alone again mean? What does that mean to you personally?
Ed Ross
Yeah, yeah. It's really an ode to Dan's mate that's no longer with us. He was a diehard Liverpool supporter and it was a classy thing that Dan wanted to do from the get-go as a memorial of him and a reminder of the catalyst to why we have started this. But it's also turned this beautiful thing where everyone within our community doesn't walk alone. Once you're a part of the TradeMutt community, there's so many of us out there for each other and, obviously, the TIACS service as well with the QR code underneath the left breast pocket. We've got a community of people that are there to help one another, which is a really cool thing and really ties into our brand and brand identity.
Mark Jones
You're talking about the fact that this thing took off and that now you've got this story and the layers of the story that are being built around it. Was there any other issues that you found as it started to take off? Like getting people, for example, to actually use the service or to talk about it in a more open way? Because changing culture in any industry is pretty hard. It takes a while.
Ed Ross
Yeah. Yeah, it does take a while. I mean, there's been so many different things. There's challenges every day. I think one of the biggest challenges from a marketing standpoint has been bridging that gap between TradeMutt and TIACS and having the distinction between what the two services are. We often laugh that there's so many TradeMutt customers that have got no idea what TIACS is, but we've been talking about TX for five and a half years. people and people's attention, it is quite limited. We feel as though anything we put out on social media or any email that we send to someone or whatever, we're like, "We've put so much time and effort, and clearly they're going to get this." If you get 50% open rate, of that 50% that open it, maybe only 3% of that 50% are actually reading it in detail to actually really understand it or whatever it is.
Mark Jones
Yeah, that's right.
Ed Ross
So they’re only just ever getting these small little soundbites, right?
Mark Jones
Yeah.
Ed Ross
That's kind of hard for us because we're doing shit loads of stuff. It would be a lot easier if we were just selling work shirts, to be honest, but we're not doing all these things. It's funny for us and our marketing standpoint, trying to ensure that we are getting the attention of people and getting the whole story out there. Opportunities like these to tell this story in depth and with the whole understanding of the step-by-step makes a really big difference. Same with keynote talks and toolbox talks and being out in front of people, but, again, you can't do that at scale. That's the juggling act of where we're at, because we need people's attention and it's hard to get unless you're in front of them because there's so many things happening.
Mark Jones
Tell me then about the social side of your work, and by that, I mean social media. It's a huge part of raising that brand awareness. How important has that been for you guys over the past couple of years?
Ed Ross
Oh, yeah. I mean, social media has always been the backbone of what we do. I think the thing is that it changes so rapidly and, for us, it's funny. We're often trying new and different things and you're always toeing the line between being edgy and being on trend and all this sort of stuff and staying genuine. I think it's just a continual battle, just trying to figure out what does and doesn't work.
It can be bashing your head against a wall a lot, trying to figure that out. I know we've definitely had that on the TIACS side of things. There's been a big sway here and there on the way that we market the TIACS service. And on the TradeMutt side, yeah, it's difficult. It'd be a lot easier in a lot of ways if we were doing just one thing, but we're doing so many things that it's kind of, again, that juggling act of you can't be too edgy because you obviously got the mental health aspect and you've got to be respectful and then you can't also be too clinical because we're not clinical and you can't be here and there. It's a funny one. It's just a juggling act and just trying to always figure it out, I suppose, really, week on week.
Mark Jones
I wonder, from your point of view, if that's one of these growing pain things that all companies go through where you start saying, "Well, how are we going to streamline a lot of this stuff?" How are you making those decisions? What's the way that the company works? Is it you and Dan and a whole team thinking through your marketing? What's the approach that you use?
Ed Ross
Yeah, we've got a marketing team. We've been using an external consultant, Mike Watkins, who was our first ever marketing manager. Actually, we've just brought him back on the last couple of months to just create a bit of structure around our social media, which has been good. And then we meet once a week for an hour, Dan and I, with the marketing team and go through week as it was last week and then week ahead. And then we have monthly content ideation sessions, which gives us the freedom to then go and lock some stuff in over the next few weeks.
It does work well. It's just we're at that tipping point. I mean, it's been a bugbear for me personally, because I personally don't want to be in content. Social media is anti-Christ. I can't stand it. I've had it on my phone. God, I wouldn't have had social media on my phone for God knows how many years. If there was a world that exists where I didn't have to ever go on social media again, I'd love to, but it's a necessary evil, sadly.
It's a funny one, because it's kind of like Dan and I need to maintain a level of forward-facing brand stuff, but also time, authenticity, remaining genuine. For me personally, it's got to a point where it's less is more for me. It's like, "Go and do other stuff." I don't need to always be in front of the camera because it's just really not my jam. Yeah, it's a funny one, where we're at with all of that. It's just, again, growing pains, really.
Mark Jones
Yeah. What are the success metrics you're more interested in? You talk about going out there.
Ed Ross
Yeah.
Mark Jones
Obviously you're going to be thinking about revenue. We haven't really talked about this, but I understand 50% of TradeMutt's profits go to TIACS. I'm sure that you've got all sorts of metrics around this. You're staying with social presumably because it's working and continues to drive things as the necessary evil, you said, but, again, what are the numbers or the success metrics you care about?
Ed Ross
Yeah. From a paid perspective, it's maintaining our marketing expense ratio and not going too far out of that. It's pretty straightforward there. Is it driving traffic? Is it clicks? Is it driving sales? And if that's all working, then that's fine. We can play with the creative however we need to there. And then from a organic social media standpoint, it's very much shares and saves. We don't care about likes. We don't care about comments. We like shares and saves, because if you're willing to save something, you care about it. If you're willing to share it with someone, you care about it enough to show someone else. That's metrics we're really looking at these days.
Mark Jones
Now, tell me about some surprising stories or impact that you've made. Do you have particular favourite examples of how this has made a difference? Because it goes without saying we're talking about a really significant issue, not just within the trades but more broadly we're seeing mental health being a continued focus for organisations and still way too many suicides. I'm sure you've got incredible stories.
Ed Ross
Oh, I've got numbers of them. Yeah. I think the one that always sticks with me when I'm asked this question personally is a bloke down in Tamworth many years ago when we first started. We heard about how he'd lost his mum to cancer and his dad had never really had a conversation about it. He wore a shirt home one day, he went and pulled him up, and said, "What's going on with this shirt?" Well, he only said, "Sit down, Dad. We got to have a conversation."
They basically sat down for three or four hours and just had it all out with him, sort of how much it affected him and how them not being able to communicate it up until this point had been really painful. I just remember hearing that story just being like, "Holy shit." That's nothing that we ever anticipated to happen, really big interventions like that. Yeah, we've just had numerous stories like that over the years. That's the first one that ever really struck me for us to be like, "Wow, this is working." It didn't have to be about a mental health issue per se, just a conversation needed to be had.
Mark Jones
On reflection, this idea of a conversation starter, that first entry point into something that I know for a lot of men in particular is really difficult, like getting them to open up. I mean, that's why we have R U OK? Day as a direct reflection of that. It's this idea that actually just starting the conversation is the biggest barrier. How do you then equip and help tradies to take the conversation further? Because it's one thing to get over that little initial hurdle, but it's actually then what, right? You're teaching them to listen or encouraging them to ask more questions perhaps or, if they're not doing well, to suggest they call your service or see their GP. You can see there's a whole cascading series of events there.
Ed Ross
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a funny one. For us, we've never really been driven to help anyone on how to have a conversation. We want that to happen organically, which is... I mean, it sounds like a cop out when you say it, but the reason is, again, it's like we just want to remain genuine. If we're there trying to give playbooks to people and like, "Hey, do this, do that," we feel that people go, "Oh, what if I don't remember all this sort of stuff? What if I forget something?" We're like, "Don't overthink it. Just don't overthink it. Just go and have a conversation with someone. You put the reps in, you'll figure it out as you go along." And if they're ever like, "Oh, what do I do if someone..." It's like, "That's when you get onto TIACS." You either reach out to TIACS on behalf of someone else or you reach out on behalf of yourself and make that proactive choice. We're just trying to remove barriers, basically, for people to be able to start that journey and really take the complication out of it, just make it as simple and easy as possible.
Mark Jones
I love that. Now, well then just on TIACS, what was it like setting that up and getting that going again? As a tradie, as a chippy, it's like a whole new world.
Ed Ross
Yeah. I mean, again, we have a cert three and carpentry and joinery certificates for Dan and I. We've got absolutely no idea about how to set up a telehealth counselling service. But look, it was a burner phone from Woollies, had a grad psychologist that we hired. Dan and I built the office out the back of our warehouse and we said, "If it rings, answer it." Yeah, the phone started ringing. It was basically working from there.
I think that one of the best things for Dan and I over the years is we've been so naive about all of the governance and all the standards and the practise, everything you need to be doing to do it properly that we're just like, "We just want to start and figure it out rather than try and get it right to then launch it." That's with both organisations know with TradeMutt and also TIACS. It's kind of like, "Well, let's just figure it out as we go." We'd rather start than always talk about starting.
TIACS... Oh, God. I'd hate to know how much of a shit shot it was for the first couple of years when we were running it, but it was like we would rather start, get the ball rolling to where it's at now. It did 1,100 clients last financial year, on average four sessions per client, 75% of calls are male. Relationship is the leading reason for people reaching out. And then over 50% of our callers coming to us through either family and friends, TradeMutt, or workplaces. Our vision for TIACS is to be the mental health counselling service you tell your mates about and it's happening.
Yeah, it's really cool. We've got 10 counsellors and a model of care that's designed specifically for the blue-collar community. the feedback on that service is incredible. We just want to remove those physical, financial, social barriers that have previously existed to keep people away from accessing private sector mental health care. We're just removing all of those things and making it just so easy. People can't believe it's free. It also has its challenges because people feel they're not obligated to always attend their appointments. That's the marketing thing we're working on, but it's pretty incredible to be able to build that service and fund it through TradeMutt, but also our other industry partners. To this day, I haven't taken a dollar from the federal government. We've been able to build a pretty substantially impactful non-profit just by figuring out on the fly, really.
Mark Jones
I love it. The idea that you're from the community literally doing it for the community, the simplicity there is really inspiring. What advice would you give to people who, in their own world or their own community at work, can see a similar pattern or an opportunity? What would you say to them? Hypothetically, somebody in nursing or finance or any other sector and they're like, "Oh, I'd like to do what they're doing but for our world," what would you say to them?
Ed Ross
Get after it. Yeah, start doing it. Get the ball rolling, get it happening, for sure. There's so many things, social issues out there that need intervention. I think that the days of expecting the government to sort any of this stuff out is definitely long gone. If there's something broken, then you need to get in and fix it and not wait on anyone else to do it, that's for sure.
Mark Jones
What do you think, from Australian culture point of view, might be some of the long-term changes as this happens? Because I do see us becoming a lot more open to conversations like this. It's becoming less of a taboo. What's your picture of what this might look like into the future?
Ed Ross
Yeah. Well, I think we're going to have a massive issue with having enough professionals out there to service the demand, to be honest. I just don't think there's going to be enough flow through of people that are qualified to do this. We're already seeing that now with such a high uptake of people using AI as a counselling service, which is absolutely has its positives and also has its major dangers as well. There's big dangers with that. As we know, ChatGPT is always going to tell you... Whatever you tell, it's a good idea. I'm yet to be told anything I've said that's a bad idea so far.
There are challenges that we see going forward, for sure, but I think that the positive thing is that there's going to be a lot of people that are willing to reach out and start that personal development piece, which is awesome. Yeah, just really changing that help-seeking behaviour and that culture, and also more people are talking about how beneficial it has been to reach out and get help. That's really how we change the culture and break that cycle of white-knuckling it, really.
Mark Jones
So good. Ed Ross, thanks for being my guest on The CMO Show. A really inspiring story and all the best to you, Dan, and the whole team there.
Ed Ross
Thanks, Mark. Really appreciate it.
Mark Jones
You know, the thing that's going to stay with me after our interview is not just the clarity and, you know how bold and clear he is about who they are and what they do, because I think we would expect that when it comes to the trades. What I really appreciated about his story was knowing where their work ends and other people's work begins. So that idea of additional counselling, other psychological services beyond what they provide, they're not looking to expand into other areas. They're looking to stay laser focused on what makes them unique. And I really like that, there's a real strength about sticking to your guns, as it were, sticking to what you're really good at. Of course, a great lesson too, in how to figure things out as you go along. We're always making stuff up as we go along to some extent, leaning on that past experience is our past stories and then learning from the people around us. Really fascinating story, I hope you got a lot out of it and that is it for this episode of The CMO Show. Of course, we love to get your input, love to hear about any other guests you think we should be speaking to very soon, and if you like this episode, please share it with somebody that you think might be interested. So that's it for this time on The CMO Show, we'll see you soon.