Creative industries often reward volume over value. As an introverted, values-led founder, I’ve built a 25-person agency by doing the opposite: listening first, leading quietly, and making space for people to do their best work. Here’s why that approach isn’t soft – it’s strategic.
I was 24 when I started one of Australia’s first social-first creative agencies, Melbourne Social Co. I had no business experience, no investors, definitely no glossy sales pitch – just a love of storytelling, a journalism background, and a gut feeling that social media was about to change everything.
My love story with social media goes back to the 2011 Tumblr era. I’d started a personal blog, a new and exciting medium at the time. That led me to running a blog and a shiny new Facebook page for the business I was with. Pretty soon other businesses were tapping me on the shoulder, asking if I could do the same for them. So I did.
I quickly saw the potential, but what I didn’t have was the confidence of an extroverted founder. I was shy, I was introverted, and the notion of “selling myself” felt seriously daunting. Back then you couldn’t slide into someone’s DMs; half the businesses I pitched weren’t even really using email. So I literally doorknocked.
I’d wander into a shop, introduce myself, and explain how I could set them up on Facebook. My pitch wasn’t slick, but it was honest – just me, talking about something I genuinely believed in. And it worked. People resonated with that transparency. Honestly, that approach has carried me through my whole business journey.
I never sat down and thought, I want to be a leader. I just wanted to do work I loved. But building a business with employees means stepping into leadership whether you’re ready or not. And inevitably you develop a leadership style. Over time I realised I didn’t need to be the loudest voice in the room to lead effectively. My introversion turned out to be an asset. It meant I listened more than I spoke, I noticed the small things, and I was naturally drawn to creating space where other people could share ideas. That’s where the best things happen: not in the loudest pitch, but in quiet collaboration.
That doesn’t mean my leadership journey was easy. When COVID hit, almost overnight we lost half our clients. Most of our portfolio at the time was hospitality and bricks-and-mortar businesses – the ones forced to close their doors. I was six weeks pregnant, staring at a daunting P&L and wondering if I was about to lose everything I’d worked so hard to build. I also knew I didn’t want to lay anyone off. I felt a huge sense of responsibility to the team I’d so carefully grown.
So we pivoted. We shifted focus from driving customer traffic to locations to helping businesses show up online when they couldn’t open physically. The team knew how hard I was fighting to protect their jobs, and they backed me completely. With a lot of hard work, we doubled the size of the business in 2020.
What I learnt through that period is that values-led leadership isn’t just what makes a workplace feel nice. It’s what holds it together when everything else is falling apart. Looking back, I think the leadership style I’d cultivated, as an introvert, played a big part in our success – the listening, the empathy, the steady calm in a storm carried us through.
Which makes me think about the bigger picture. If businesses can survive and even grow in a crisis when led differently, why are creative industries still dominated by one model of leadership – loud, extroverted, and often male? Women make up the majority of early-career creative talent, but only 11% of senior leadership roles are held by women. It’s not that women don’t want those roles or aren’t capable of them.
More often than not, the real barrier is time.
So many of us are balancing unpaid care work, the mental load, the endless invisible to-do list outside of work. That eats away at the time you’d otherwise use to upskill, to network, to put your hand up for stretch roles. It’s not a lack of ambition or ability. It’s a lack of hours in the day.
I see it in my own team – talented women questioning whether they can go for the next step because they’re also navigating family responsibilities. Which is why I try to model a different way. I’ve got two young kids. My general manager also has two young kids. We’re not special, but we are proof you can do both – if the workplace makes space for it.
At MSC, there are 25 people in the business and my entire leadership team is female. That’s not a coincidence. We’ve built the kind of culture I wish I’d seen more of when I was starting out. We respect boundaries, we normalise flexibility, we make it possible for parenthood and leadership to coexist. And we encourage women to step into leadership even if they don’t fit the traditional mould of what a “boss” should look like.
For me, leadership has never been about being the loudest in the room. It’s about being steady enough that others feel safe to grow and thrive, without having to choose between their ambition and their life outside of work.
Introverted, values-led leadership has carried me through every chapter of my business – from those early days of knocking on doors, to the rollercoaster that was COVID, to now, leading a team of 25 women and, honestly, thriving. I believe the industry needs more of it.
When women are given the space and support to lead on their own terms, they don’t just fill leadership roles. They change them.