Journalist and entrepreneur, Annabelle Hickson, is a very talented story teller and knows a bloody good yarn when she hears one.  So good, in fact, she started her own magazine, Galah in 2020 with precisely that mission: to share beautiful story telling about regional headlines that matter. Formerly a city girl, Annabelle, started her career as a reporter for The Australian newspaper in the early 2000s, before she fell in love with a handsome farmer from the NSW border and her life took a completely different direction. Annabelle now lives on Australia's second largest pecan orchard, a farm situated in far north west New South Wales sandwiched between the tiny towns of Tenterfield and Texas. Yes that's the Texas NSW. This is also Galah HQ. As an outsider all she'd ever heard in the media was negativity about the bush, droughts, floods, rains and whingeing farmers. But her experience on the land was proving to be quite different, Everywhere she looked she saw smart, clever and resilient people who talked about opportunities instead of limitations.  Annabelle wanted to tell a different story and she knew most mainstream magazines were already battling diminishing budgets, staff cuts and quality issues. Annabelle wanted to create a publication that assumed people in regional Australia were a smart and increasingly diverse lot, who cared about community and creativity and the environment, as well as profitability. And she wanted a publication that acted as a bridge between the city and country divide. And so Galah was born. Annabelle has an incredible way with words, she's a gifted story-teller and can sniff out a paid ad, thinly veiled as a story pitch, from a mile away. Join me as we talk about the importance of building trust in your brand before all else, how she created a 70,000 plus community from scratch and why great story-telling sells so well. You can check out her incredible masterpiece that is Galah Magazine right here: https://www.galahpress.com/ Join the Media Masters Academy Waitlist here (doors open again in Feb 2024!) Join the MMA Waitlist here!