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Are you ready to transform your life and career by tackling meaningful problems head-on?
In this powerful conversation, Julian Pace, the visionary founder of Happiness Co, shares his journey of turning personal tragedy into a global mission that has already impacted millions.
From the importance of authentic living to building a legacy that matters, Julian dives deep into the philosophy that drives Happiness Co and its groundbreaking approach to mental health and wellbeing.
You’ll discover the compelling origin story of Happiness Co, learn how to embrace life’s challenges as opportunities for growth, and understand the core values that can help you build a life and career filled with purpose.
By watching this video, you’ll gain insights that can inspire you to overcome your own obstacles, find meaning in your work, and contribute positively to the world around you.
The Interview with Julian Pace
Key Takeaways
- Meaningful Problems Lead to Meaningful Lives: Julian emphasises that to live a meaningful life and build a meaningful career, you must embrace meaningful problems. These challenges, while difficult, are what drive growth and purpose.
- The Power of Lived Experience: Julian’s journey from personal loss to founding Happiness Co highlights the importance of using lived experiences to fuel positive change. His story is a testament to turning pain into purpose.
- Pre-Emptive Mental Health Focus: Happiness Co is unique in its approach to mental health, focusing on pre-emptive care—working on mental health when you want to, not just when you have to. This proactive approach helps individuals maintain wellbeing rather than merely responding to crises.
- Authenticity is Key: Being authentic and real in both life and business is central to Julian’s philosophy. He believes that genuine care and authenticity are what truly resonate with people and drive success.
- Contribution Over Results: Julian shares a powerful perspective on focusing on the reasons behind your actions rather than just the results. He suggests that when your reasons are strong and meaningful, you’re always winning, even if the immediate results don’t show it.
- Building a Symbol, Not Just a Brand: Happiness Co aims to be more than just a mental health organisation—it strives to be a symbol of hope, goodness, and positive change in the world. Julian discusses how creating a brand that represents these values can inspire others and drive long-term success.
The Script from the Video
Julian Pace
If you want a meaningful life and a meaningful career then you have to have meaningful problems.
Calum Maxwell
You were there, you were on a mission and you delivered anyway.
Julian Pace
Be authentic, be real and make it meaningful.
[Intro End]
Julian Pace
I’m Julian Pace, I’m the founder and the CEO of the Happiness Co and the founder of the Happiness Co Foundation.
Calum Maxwell
Can you tell us a little bit about Happiness Co and the Happiness Co Foundation, what they are and why they exist?
Julian Pace
The mission that we have at Happiness Co and the Foundation is to positively impact 10 million lives in 10 years. It’s about embracing goodness, meaningful change, contribution, self-growth, mental health and wellbeing. It’s an organisation that is based on lived experience integration and it’s pre-emptive. So we all know prevention is better than a cure and Happiness Co focuses on the pre-emptive part of mental health, which is working on your mental health when you want to, not have to.
Calum Maxwell
Yeah.
Julian Pace
And often in life we wait until it’s too late to want to fix something. When we’re struggling or hurting or heartbroken or things are at breaking point, then we decide we want to change. At Happiness Co we try and work on the motivation and empowerment of actually working on being a good dad because you get to, being a good mum because you get to, being a great work colleague because you get to and actually reaping all the amazing benefits of working on yourself in a really healthy way.
Calum Maxwell
What inspired you? Can you share the story behind the founding of Happiness Co?
Julian Pace
It’s been somewhat a crazy whirlwind. I say to people all the time, I’m an accidental entrepreneur but I’m so grateful I am. And the story of Happiness Co, the origin story I guess, was because I lost my father to suicide when I was 21. And that just changed the way I saw the world. It changed the way I saw people but most importantly it changed the way I saw myself and I just really struggled with finding meaning and connection and love and I just went into a really dark place in my life for a bunch of years.
And I went to professional counselling and therapy and tried to seek advice and counsel to try and rebuild my life and it just didn’t work for me. I felt like I was going backwards rather than forwards and I felt more lost and had less clarity than I had before I even walked in the room. Then I decided to look at how can I turn my life around in some other ways and be more holistic in how I look after myself and the people I spend time with and what I eat and what I drink and how I talk to myself and the biggest bully of all is us and how can I become my biggest cheerleader instead.
And these small little things, these small little choices turned into my habits and habits determine your happiness. And then when I came out the other side of losing my father and found a better sense of self again I said, “Surely there will be other people out there who have had the same experience.” So I found a gap in the market. Clinical intervention is incredible for people who need it and happiness co is incredible for a whole different range of people who need it. And I wanted to build something for the young people at the time that were struggling and maybe didn’t want talk therapy and didn’t want the traditional means of support.
So it just took off amazingly well from day one and I think because no one really cares about how much you know until they realise how much you care. And I think that’s been at the core of what we do. People know we care deeply and every interaction and everything that we do has high meaning because we understand the stakes are so high. You’re someone’s dad, you’re someone’s brother, you’re someone’s mum, you’re someone’s sister.
People’s lives matter and one thing I’ve always been really driven by is what are our reasons over our results. Because results you can look at the scoreboard, you can look at the P&L, you can look at the balance sheet and it can look like you’re losing. But if your reasons are really strong and profound then you’re always winning.
Calum Maxwell
I love that something that I share with you actually is that looking at those moments, those situations and looking for what’s positive. Where am I at? What have I learnt and how can I move forward from this? I think when we seek the positivity in everything we find the opportunity that’s in front of us.
Julian Pace
Massively. It’s like the trigger or the glimmer. People trigger you, environments trigger you, memories trigger you and triggers can be the things that we’ve gone through that have hurt us along the way. That’s part of life. But the glimmers are the people that you spend time with that make you walk a little taller, hold your head a little higher. When you walk with them they give you a glimmer of things like hope and possibility and maybe that even though you feel so lost and so broken that you still have a fighting chance.
And I think often in life we spend a lot of times and attention engaging in the trigger and not the glimmer. What’s it teaching us? What can we learn from it? We’ve put pain into our purpose, our sadness into our strength. And I think as entrepreneurs or business owners or people who are running brands, where you find your ticker, your heart and what’s worth fighting for is super important because if you want a meaningful life and a meaningful career then you have to have meaningful problems.
And what an incredible thing to have if you’re a business owner or a CEO or a founder or you’re working on something great. It comes with meaningful problems. But they’re the problems that are worth fighting for. And I’ve always kind of thought that about my own journey. All the things that come up and seem like a struggle seems like a really meaningful opportunity to me.
Calum Maxwell
I say problem solvers, purpose driven on a mission to make the world a better place. So spot on.
Calum Maxwell
What is the core mission of Happiness Co and how do you aim to empower the people you work with through your services?
Julian Pace
Our core mission is probably our philosophy on what is it that we teach and how it is that we teach it. The way we go about our workshops, the way we engage in what we do and how we interact and engage with the people that we’re trying to help with the philosophy of helping people build a strong sense of self which leads to self-advocacy.
Number two, meaningful connection. It’s not about how many friends that you have, it’s about the true meaning that they have in your life. In trying to get people to remind themselves that the people in their lives that mean the most to them are all around them but you’ve got to look for them. That matters. Meaningful connection matters.
Calum Maxwell
Right in front of you.
Julian Pace
Often we care so much about complete strangers, what they think of us or work colleagues or social media and the people who should have the most important seats in your arena are the ones that you care about most.
And number three, contribution. So that’s how we operate as a model. We’re a social enterprise so a great way to think about that is a heart of a charity and a head of a business. Everything that we do is about making profit for purpose. We repurpose our profit into making a difference. Think about TOMS shoes. You buy a pair of TOMS shoes, they donate a pair of TOMS shoes. Mexican on a Mission, you buy a burrito, they donate a burrito. Everything that we do here is about making a difference and I’m a fundamental believer that every single person on the planet makes a difference in this world. Any question is do you make a good one or not?
Everything that you get is a choice towards doing good with your life or good with people or not and it can be very challenging but I think when people understand they have a part to play in making contribution into their own lives, their family’s life, their community’s life it makes a huge difference in the type of people that we think that we are. And that’s always been something I’ve really tried to align with at Happiness Co and the people who work for us and our team and our employees and what this special culture that we have, it’s not what you do here. It’s how you feel about yourself when you’re doing it.
Feeling true to your values and being able to show up authentically is a big part of what we preach here internally but because we’re so big on it internally we go out and represent this externally and I think that’s been a big part of our success, being a real, authentic, meaningful brand and I think in the modern world that we live in people can see through BS pretty quick.
Calum Maxwell
Oh, totally, 100%.
Julian Pace
You can sense the inauthenticity of it so I’m like be authentic, be real and make it meaningful.
Calum Maxwell
Such a great drive behind what you do. I say myself that I live to serve because when I’m serving I’m solving. Growing up I had a father that was serving the community on a regular basis in multiple different areas, so thanks dad.
Julian
Yeah, thanks dad, appreciate it. What a great lesson to learn.
Calum Maxwell
Happiness Co is such a strong brand and identity. What strategies and key elements did you focus on to just build such a strong brand?
Julian Pace
The best way I can describe how I tried to build Happiness Co was when I felt anxious as a child and I used to watch Batman. If you think about symbolism with Batman you think about the bat, the bat light.
Calum Maxwell
Someone’s coming.
Julian Pace
Someone’s coming, there’s good out there still. There’s someone out there fighting for what’s right in this world and what’s true and kind and decent and loving. When I built Happiness Co I wanted it to mean something more than just mental health. I wanted it to represent something good in us all. Something that inspired the change, the contribution, the connection that we all have but most importantly probably the hope.
Because I think hope is probably one of the most powerful commodities that you have in the world. To know that you can wake up tomorrow morning and give yourself a fighting chance in your health, your career, your finances, your relationships and yourself. And to me that’s symbolism. What does your brand represent and does it inspire the best in people? I’ve always believed that. That it needs to mean something. It should be something that you’re really proud to represent. And if it is all these things it has the power to become a symbol versus a brand.
So that was what I really worked on. What it feels like, what it looks like, how could it have meaning to people. So lots of buy-in, lots of conversations. And it wasn’t easy. Trust me it was so hard at the start. I remember I did 11 gigs and not one person rocked up. And you feel real disappointed. You feel really disheartened. That comment before about reasons over results though. Not one person showed up. But my reason was to do something great with something really bad. And that was my internal driver at the start. To take something bad and turn it into something good.
I didn’t want my dad’s death to be something that I just wore around like a battle wound for the rest of my life and felt that something had been taken from me. And truly I felt that for a long period. I felt something I’d been robbed. Something I thought I would never get back. And Happiness Co hasn’t replaced him for me. But that brand has given me such a good perspective on the world. Taking that really bad moment and turning it into something really inspiring and empowering. Because I think I see it as the best in me. We try really hard to allow it to be a symbol for the best in others.
Calum Maxwell
Super powerful stuff, Jules. I recall a conversation. Those workshops that you turned up to and no one turned up themselves. You still got on stage and presented from what I remember.
Julian Pace
Yep. I still did it.
Calum Maxwell
That’s impressive. You were there. You were on a mission. You just delivered anyway.
Julian Pace
One thing I kind of never forgot that my dad would talk to me about when I was young. To do the things that you said you’d do and no one’s watching. Well there was no one to watch and there was no one to say good job or give you feedback or critique your message. But you know what? I said I was going to do it so I might as well do it anyway. I could still get the practice in. Sharing your heart and your love and especially when I was starting out. It was still pretty raw for me. Like it’s still raw for me now but it was a lot rawer back then. “I’m like I want to share this and I want to get better at sharing it.” So even though there’s no one in the room I’m going to share it anyway.
Calum Maxwell
I’ll share it and practice. Yeah.
Julian Pace
Just practice. You know the 10,000 hour rule? You know just mastery 10,000 hours.
Calum Maxwell
Yeah.
Julian Pace
It doesn’t mean someone has to be in front of you while you’re doing it. And you know the next one there was like four people. And my biggest lesson in that was asking for help from the right people. Because the reason no one was rocking up it wasn’t so much about what I was doing. It was how I was presenting it. I remember the marketing poster at the time. If I told you it was on the marketing poster you wouldn’t have come either. So it was about asking people for help and getting the right people on the bus through there and getting a committed team of people that you can rely on that are best in what they do to allow you to leverage your best in world. I think for anyone watching this make sure you’re really committed to doing the things that you said you do and no one’s watching.
Calum Maxwell
How has your brand evolved along your journey and what were some significant milestones along that journey?
Julian Pace
Happiness Co. in the market when it first came in was laughed out of rooms. It’s ‘Happiness Co.’ and we work in a really grim space. You think about all the mental health names and brands and we have respect for so many of them but often you think about their name even they focus on the downside of mental health. I wanted it to be really positive thought when you thought about mental health. Like how you can fix your life. People laughed at us at the room. Lived experience integration wasn’t a big thing back then. The power of lived experience and how that creates so much hope in people’s lives. So it was really hard to get credibility.
The repetition was just showing up and doing the push ups and no one’s going to do it for you. No one’s going to advocate your dreams as much as you should. No one’s going to fly the flag for you what you care about more than you should. I was like I’m going to keep showing up with this repetition of doing something good. And then clarity came second. We started to create clarity in the market of what we stood for, what we did, how we did it. And then clarity becomes really powerful if you get it right.
Then Happiness Co. found its niche from repetition and creating clarity and people are like, “Oh, they’re not trying to be in the clinical intervention space. They’re in this space.” And they would get it. And then we had an identity and we had a place in the marketplace and then it just went out of control.
And then some significant milestones from there are really, really incredible JVs and our collaborations with some amazing brands including yours. And to me; if you want to go fast then go alone, If you want to go far then go together. So we’ve had some really great brands that have been with us for a long time. Hertz Australia. Optus Stadium is our purpose partner. Our accountants Elevate. You guys are our digital media and optimisation specialists. Positioning our brand in a more healthy, engaging, inspiring way. That’s not our best in the world. But getting great people around you to allow you to elevate that. So that was significant milestones for us.
And our RAC partnerships allow us to see around 30,000 young students every single year. Working on things like self-esteem, peer pressure, road safety, dealing with judgement and shame. These collaborations have allowed us to do such goodness. So much more. So don’t try and be everything to everyone because you end up being nothing to no one. Really own what you own and then get people around you to help you elevate that message and elevate that impact. So that has been significant for us. To create clarity through repetition, to partner in a line with really, really incredible brands that build our credibility.
Trust is so hard to create.
Calum Maxwell
One of the most important things.
Julian Pace
And it’s all you get. And I think that trust is rapport. And if you have rapport with someone or something, you can go anywhere. Holding that tightly. So it’s about rapport and it’s about meaningful relationships that both people get something out of in both organizations. It’s not just about Happiness Co. It’s about what can we give in return.
So doing all the things that we talked about before. Who are the brands that give you a strong sense of self? Who are the brands that help you have meaningful connection? And who are the brands that you align with that help you contribute? So contribution, meaningful connection and a strong sense of self. They are being significant with the companies and brands that we’ve aligned with.
Calum Maxwell
Our purpose has connections that matter in it. And our vision has meaningful connections in it. So very similarly aligned there without a doubt.
Julian Pace
Yeah, absolutely.
Calum Maxwell
Can you share how your values are reflected within the organization on a daily basis?
Julian Pace
The way I see values internally at Happiness Co. we call them guiding behaviours. And guiding behaviours are how we should show up for each other every day. Your attitude reflects your altitude in everything that you do. Your attitude towards your team, the work that you do, the impact that you make, that matters.
So we take values and turn them into behaviours. And the guiding principles to that are kindness, love and decency. To be kind in your interactions and kind to self. To love what you do and try to love and like the people around you and feel like what you’re doing has meaning and possibility. To know you’re pushing the pendulum forward, to have meaningful work, something to wake up for. And to feel liked and loved. And not to be in love with your work colleagues, but to love what they show up and do and love what they represent and love the spirit they bring. I think that’s powerful.
Calum Maxwell
And working together.
Julian Pace
Working together for a common goal. And then decency. If you want a decent world, you’ve got to remember to be a decent person. And decency starts with us. So they are three absolutes that we have here. They’re guiding behaviours that allow us to show up and it’s an ingrained in us. But we assess our people based on how they behave against them three things.
Calum Maxwell
They are core values. They’re brilliant. Amazing. Working with Happiness Co. I have felt nothing but those three things.
Julian Pace
And it’s not always easy, but you get it wrong.
Calum Maxwell
We’re human.
Julian Pace
We’re human, right? When you get kindness, love or decency wrong, you can self-punish or you can self-correct. Self-punishment would look like when you beat yourself up for it. I made a mistake. I’m an idiot. I’m a loser.
Calum Maxwell
You get caught in the moment and you don’t look to the future and the opportunity. We have our biggest learnings when we make mistakes.
Julian Pace
Absolutely.
Calum Maxwell
Get it wrong. Get it wrong because that’s the fastest way to learn.
Julian Pace
Mistakes are allowing you to learn, but there is a difference between making the same old mistakes. Keep showing up late all the time for the same old reason would be the same old mistake. Let your mistakes have growth attached to them. I’m going to learn from them. I want to be better and self-correct.
So if someone comes into your office and you bulldoze their ideas because you’re having a bad day, go into the office later on and say, “Hey, you know what? I got that wrong. That was on me. That’s not on you. I was having a real bad moment. I’m sorry. I want to hear what you have to say.” That’s self-correction.
Calum Maxwell
Reflection and acceptance and then correcting.
Julian Pace
So powerful, isn’t it? Because don’t stew on the moment you got wrong because I think we give that so much power. We are perfectly imperfect as people. Actually focus on correction because that’s where people get more trust, more buy-in, more respect. They talk about it in customer service. They talk about service recovery.
People actually trust brands more when their brand gets it wrong and they service the cover more than they did if they didn’t get it wrong in the first place. So how you treat people after you get it wrong actually says way more about you than getting
it right.
Calum Maxwell
Yes. Speaking my language, excellent. Thanks, Jules.
Calum Maxwell
What do you believe are the critical factors that have led to Happiness Co.’s success?
Julian Pace
If you ask different people in the team, they’ll probably give you a different answer. To me, I reckon it’s about really, really giving a shit. All in on people. All the time. And that doesn’t mean you’re a perfect brand. It doesn’t mean you get it right all the time. But what’s your intent? If your intention is good and pure and true and it’s for the right reasons, then I think that comes through in everything that you do. So I think embodying your brand’s message and values and if you don’t, find a way to come up with new values that you embody. They’re not like your brand values and then your people. It’s like they should be intertwined. Rather than these are our values, now adopt them.
Calum Maxwell
Yes. Couldn’t agree more.
Julian Pace
So probably the same way I see happiness and success. People think about success and happiness as a different conversation. Happiness is over here and success is over here. But you should entwine them. Why? Because I’ll tell you what success is not. Success is not driving a car that you love to a job that you hate. Success is not having a big ass mortgage that you have no money to pay for and you’re so stressed all the time. And you have a nice house but it’s not a home because the home is based on the relationships that are inside of it but they’re breaking down because you have no time for each other.
It’s about redefining what that is and I think what has made us a real change maker for people is allowing them to feel and give them permission to actually embrace and chase and build happiness and know that that’s actually, you deserve it. There was a study done back in like 2012, talked about people who got what they wanted versus people who didn’t. And the biggest thing that was there in regards to money, health, career, finances, a better life, the people who believed they deserved it versus the people who believed they did not.
I think for us it’s about giving people permission to believe again, to seek that next possibility because life can be really freaking hard. And in my particular work you see it a lot which is learned hopelessness. It’s like I’ve been heartbroken so many times, what’s the point? I didn’t get that job I went through so many times, I’m just going to stay here and then we just become okay with where we are because we feel comfortable and secure but it doesn’t mean that we’re happy and we’re thriving and we feel great about ourselves.
So we Happiness Co. to try and get people to re-inspire their views and their thoughts and their feelings and what could that next best possibility look like for you. And I think that matters, I think people chase that and if you give people permission, we are a permissioned society. You think about permission, you’ve been asking your whole life for permission. “Mum, can I go to the toilet? Dad, can I stay up late? Can I go to my friend’s house on the weekend? Can I have chocolate?” That was just when you were growing up. Then you ask permission when you were a teenager and then you ask permission in your job. “Can I work on this project? Can I take the weekend off?” We ask people for permission every step of the way.
The downside to that is that often we’re waiting for someone to give us permission to be truly happy and to show up the way that we want to show up and I think that comes down to the difference between nice and being good, depending on which one you are. So what’s the downside of being nice?
Calum Maxwell
If you’re being nice on a regular basis, sometimes you’re actually foregoing your own wellbeing.
Julian Pace
You maybe don’t keep your own promises. Maybe you’re a people pleaser.
Calum Maxwell
Yes, 100%.
Julian Pace
Have you ever heard a nice person finishes last?
Calum Maxwell
Yeah, of course.
Julian Pace
Gets walked over.
Calum Maxwell
Because they put everyone else forward.
Julian Pace
Nice people are so good at putting everyone else before them and filling up the buckets of other people and leaving how much for themselves?
Calum Maxwell
Nothing.
Julian Pace
So very little. Nice people are people on the aeroplane so you fit other people’s oxygen masks first and what would be the point if you die, right? That’s nice. And you know what? That’s awesome. I’m actually not saying there’s anything wrong with being a nice person. If you can be anything, be nice. But if you can be above nice, be good. A good person stands for what is right. And you know what I love about good people? They’ll do what’s right even if people don’t like them.
Calum Maxwell
It matters about the good.
Julian Pace
It goes beyond being liked. I think being liked can be really challenging in business and in life. Being a likeable character should come from all the things that you believe in and stand for. And being liked sometimes fitting in or conforming or peer pressure can lead to lots of challenges. So I think nice is great but good is way better.
Calum Maxwell
Bringing it back to those values, when we went through the exercise of actually finding what our values were, they were already there. They just needed to be uncovered. Something that’s evolved through the development of my business is then finding the right people that fit those values to join the team. So I couldn’t agree more with you around values and just how important and integral they are to a business. So finding the right values.
Julian Pace
One of our great friends and mentors we don’t quite work with as well is Justin Langer. He always says that you go for character over cover drives because you can always teach someone how to enhance what they do. But you can’t teach someone to be good. If they’re unkind and they’re selfish and they’re self-absorbed and they make other people feel less than and other people are scared to make mistakes in front of them and they feel stressed and anxious and worried and never feel seen and heard and know their opinion matters and they’re included and they’ve got a sense of belonging. That’s the person that you have in your organisation but they are dominant in getting results. It’s short form because the people who have great characters will always find a way to embrace the journey with everyone around them.
Calum Maxwell
I could sit here talking to you for another two hours I swear but thank you so much for taking time out of your day to share your journey and insights with everyone. I can’t wait to send this out. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Julian Pace
Thank you mate and thanks for the opportunity and like hand on heart your support of us is not lost on us. It allows us to elevate our message and help more people and change more lives and even save them. So thank you.
Calum Maxwell
It’s a pleasure mate.
