Life lessons with Jesse Leeworthy and Jonathan Byrt
On Monday 31 January 2022, the Year 12 cohort were extremely fortunate to have the co-founders of memobottle™, Jesse Leeworthy and Jonathan Byrt, speak with them about their entrepreneurial journey and how they built their environmentally conscious company.
Jesse and Jonathan shared their inspiring story of how they launched the memobottle™ through a Kickstarter campaign in 2014, with the intention of breaking society’s dependence on single-use drink bottles. They are a proud supporter of Water.org, an international nonprofit organisation that has positively transformed millions of lives around the world with access to safe water and sanitation.
In addition to this, memobottle™’s award-winning paper-shaped design has become a fan favourite around the globe due to its ability to conveniently slip into bags or sit flat against books or laptops.
The Year 12s were thoroughly inspired by Jesse and Jonathan’s story and left feeling motivated for their final year of school.
Eight life lessons for Year 12s:
- Life will not be dictated by the decisions you make now.
- Goal Setting. Short term to long term – this week to this year.
- 80-20 principle: that 80% of outcomes (or outputs) result from 20% of all causes (or inputs) for any given event. In business, a goal of the 80-20 rule is to identify inputs that are potentially the most productive and make them the priority. For instance, once managers identify factors that are critical to their company’s success, they should give those factors the most focus.
- Resilience: Life is about making mistakes. Learn from them.
- Step outside your comfort zone. The best things happen there.
- You are an average of the five people around you. Make sure you surround yourself with good people. No oxygen thieves.
- Focus on the solution, don’t dwell on the problem.
- Just ‘give it a go’. Believe in yourself. You can refine things later. But just start.